Another special addition Saturday saw 11 of us out to plant tree whips, clear woodpiles and create a loggery for Lammas Park Enclosure, all before midday!

We met after Gunnersbury parkrun where we welcomed new member Claire for her first GoodGym experience and ten others looking to do some good to kick off their weekend. This was the second of our January weekend offerings and it was great to see that lots of us are looking to take part in community volunteering on these weekend slots, we'll definitely be arranging more outside of our usual Tuesday evening slot in the future!

Special mention to Chris who completed his 50th good deed with GoodGym today, nearly one year to the day since he started, that's dedication and for that we applaud you! Thank you for all your amazing contributions!

Chief whip!

We had a short 3km run over to the task where we met Walpole Park ranger, Vanessa and lots of other volunteers who had come out for this community planting day. There was lots to do including getting to work on planting some of the 100 tree whips donated by the Mayor of London. After digging out holes (tougher than it sounds when the whole area used to be tennis courts and you continually hit rock and gravel!) we dipped our whips in a special protective root powder before bedding them in ready to start their new lives in the park!

Logging a good deed!

Next it was onto a bit of heavy lifting and digging which gave everyone a fantastic workout! Our task was to clear a large area of logs and tree cuttings so that more whips could be planted in that part of the enclosure. Alongside this we also had to dig a large trench to create a loggery for bugs and beetles to use as their habitat. Due to the aforementioned underground tennis courts this was literally a hardcore challenge!

After digging what looked to be our own grave, we began adding in the logs sticking out at all different angles to create a bit of an artistic sculpture for the parks wildlife and bugs to use as their own. It was so great to see it come to life after initially just being an overgrown section of park!

After an hour and a half of hard work it was time for us to pack up and part ways knowing that every time we now run past the park we can look at the trees growing in this fantastic community space.

On Saturday 5th January GoodGym descended on Gunnersbury Parkrun with 32 of us turning up to volunteer, run and plog our way to a fantastic start to the new year!

As well as regulars from Ealing and Hounslow we had tourists from lots of other GoodGym areas which was lovely to see. We also had 4 brand new GoodGym members join us so a big welcome to Sarb, Andre, Chris and Alasdair!

Cheers to the volunteers!

We filled most of the volunteer spots for parkrun and it was great to see all the red GoodGym t-shirts out in the park across various roles. We had scanners, marshals, time keepers and token sorters as well as pacers, a tail walker and runners over the whole field! A massive thank you to everyone who helped out, almost everyone who ran also helped with either the set up or break down too so it really was a team volunteering effort!

Well done to the runners!

• Graham was first GoodGymer home and 2nd overall with a new course PB of 17:48
• Callum bagged a new PB and his first sub 20!
• Remy scored herself a new PB of 26:47

It's all about the pace

• James paced 22 minutes coming in at 22:10
• Andy paced 23 minutes perfectly and came in at 22:55
• Sarah paced a great sub 25 in 24:42
• Michael paced a speedy sub 26 in 25:32
• Paul had those looking to do sub 28 following him round and he came in at a perfect 27:56

Pacing is not an easy task and everyone did great!

It's never BIN bigger...

After a record attendance at Gunnersbury parkrun (626 in total!) it was time for the main event... Plogging! We all chipped in to help pack up the parkrun equipment and then assembled to arm ourselves with bin loops, pickers and gloves and split into groups across the park to help clean up any litter we could find. The woods lining the paths seemed to be the worst affected areas so we all did a bit of rambling around and in some cases crawling under shrubbery to get those pesky cans out!

We split everything into recyclable and rubbish so that it could be taken to the right bins after we were done and luckily most of what we found ended up in recycling!

We agreed to meet back at the nice warm cafe where everyone ditched the equipment in favour of a well earned hot beverage before parting ways, I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday morning!

Thank you to everyone for coming along!

It was a mild evening in Ealing last night, perfect for a run and spot of gardening at DIG for Cultivate London.

We started with a group introduction welcoming two new runners into the fold with Sinead and Charlotte joining us for their first GoodGym run. Big welcome, you both did a great job!

50 TODAY!

We also had another reason to celebrate tonight with Michael C completing his 50th good deed and earning his black ninja t-shirt! Over the past year Michael has been a regular in Ealing as well as visiting a few other areas and starting his mission running. He always volunteers to back mark as part of the taskforce and is also great a encouraging people to come to parkrun outside of of Tuesday session. We're very happy to have him as part of the Ealing crew and look forward to having him on the next 50 tasks to get his t-shirt with wings!

After a quick sweep on favourite ice-cream flavours (chocolate and banana got a few mentions) we were off and started with a little warm up jog down to the park before working in file formation on some sprint work. Last week we did a test run of this but went a little too fast, this week I think we nailed it!

We arrived at the site and were met by Rosie who had a large pitch for us to de-weed and turn over to get ready for a whole new crop to be planted in. She also had some planting for us to complete in another section of the garden so lots for everyone to get stuck into!

diggity, some doubt...

After initial confusion of 'surely this isn't all weeds, we can't be taking it all out?!' it was confirmed it was and we had permission to go to town on the plot and everyone grabbed a fork and started digging away! Everyone said what a hard workout the job was which is an added bonus on these types of tasks but I think one of the hardest things about last night was getting the full wheelbarrows on weeds into the compost heap, the slope proved tricky to maneuver and required a few of us get it up an over!

I don't think any of us wanted to leave but after half an hour of tough digging it was time time to call it a night, but don't worry it won't go unfinished as we'll back back next week to pick up were we left off!

This week 13 GG-ers ran 5.6km to help a dementia day care centre tidy up the garden.

We started, as always, at the Phoenix - where two newbies showed up for doc checks, but then ran away (and not with us). Next time!

We then did some quick house keeping, before warming up by the Phoenix. This included many lunges, wingles and hip thrusts. The sort of this Boomerang was made for, really.

It's always a slow burner warming up in winter, but those hills to Hornsey made sure we were at least warm in parts!

Damian lead the way, while Freya was our trusty back-marker. Tonight was Damian's 99th good deed! If you'd like to help him celebrate the big 1-0-0, he'll be doing a mission at Long Lane Pasture on Saturday. You can sign up here

Once we made it to the centre there was a little confusion at first about where the door actually was - the perfect opportunity for the gang to get their squats in while I figured it out.

Poppy welcomed up into the centre, offered the team some juice and water and explained what we'd be doing. Tonight's tools were kindly lent by the folks at Friends of Tottenham Green, as the centre doesn't have any of their own. We split into four teams to turn the soil in the raised beds, chop up a dead bush, pull the weeds from the bricks and collect the fallen leaves.

We'll be helping a few more times over winter to get the garden ready for spring time. This will mean the people using the dementia service will have the opportunity to use the wonderful garden and come outside. Unfortunately the garden becomes a bit too dangerous when it gets overgrown for people with varying mobility - so our help was very much appreciated!

We then gathered for a quick group photo, which Poppy kindly offered to take which means I get to be in it!

It was then time to run home - back up the massive hill!

Nothing like running uphill for over a kilometer to get those legs burning! We all had a little breather at the top before continuing to our next checkpoint, where we stopped and had a mini fitness sesh focusing on glute activation.

We then split into two teams: the speedy team zoomed off with Damian for the final 0.4 miles back to base while the less speedy group stayed with me. My group was doing 9min/miles, but I forgot to ask Damian what his group did. So I'm going to guess 7, because they vanished into the night so fast.

It was then time to stretch it out and loosen the muscles we worked so hard tonight. Followed by Chocolate Bourbons + Some fancy sweets from Moldova courtesy of Eleanor

13 of GG Barnet's finest ran 4km, helped Northwold Rose Gardens & did a pyramid session

On a full moon Halloween evening we gathered at the Phoneix Cinema, welcomed newbie Wendy and talked about the news:

1. Last GG Monthly Drinks of the year next Thursday in Stratford - all details here
2. GG Christmas Party is on Friday 8th December at Battersea Art Centre - costume theme is BLACK & RED!
3. There is an Unofficial Unofficial GoodGym Facebook Group if you'd like to join, it's full of news, races, meet ups and more. Just say your from Barnet in the request and I'll accept you.

Led by Damian and backed by Freya we headed to Northwold Rose Gardens to help Brian with some gardening. This was none of your weeding in the dark lark, our tasks for the evening were follows:

1. Shovelling, wheelbarrowing and laying woodchip around hedges and trees.
2. Emptying out three compost (curry flavoured) bins onto various plants to help keep it rich and well fed.

Splitting into small teams we got to work. Various tasks featured Skelton (Freya), BadGym Rep (Damian) and Death (Paul) - nice one for dressing up guys! Slightly terrifying...

Pyramid session IN the dark!

After 30 mins of spooky graft we were done and went to the dark tennis courts for a pyramid session - 1-2-1 for speed efforts with 1 minute recovery in between. Using the tennis court fences we could work out where we were.

Once we completed our 2km run back, we stretched and handed our treats (no tricks).

Sign up for next week here, I'm covering for Pennie again as she'll be recovering from NYC Marathon - good luck!

PB out