15 GoodGym-ers ran a total of 4.5km to help a care home with a rather unusual task.

It was great to see so many GG-ers at this week’s run, particularly so many newbies! Massive shout out to Jess, Jeff and Nicola who came along for the first time – be sure to give them a cheer on the GG website! (Click their names – you can support each other from each others profiles, too.) Also a big welcome to Tejeswita and Dan who joined the Barnet crew this week from other boroughs. It was such a treat to see so many new faces! (It's also very much a treat to see so many of the same faces, so keep coming back.)

Jess actually decided to come along after seeing the GoodGym BBC feature this week, so that’s exciting! I’m pleased it worked!

Dorian was the first GG-er to join me this week, followed soon after by the rest of the gang. As it was halloween this week, Hazel brought along her cape, which Damian wore beautifully as he lead us up the Bishop’s Avenue to the Nightingale Hammerson care home.

We were greeted by 6 wonderful residents and activities coordinator Chris, who even provided a box of chocolates to share. Our task this evening was to hang out with the residents and tell them about what we do; we came by a few weeks ago to clean out their shed and they were very curious about us. Thank you to Freya and Heather for helping with photo-taking duties. I think today might be the first week I have GG Barnet pictures I’m actually in, apart from Long Lane Pasture! That’s a treat. For me, anyway.

It was a really nice task. Being able to have a direct impact on somebody’s day is a really nice thing and these women were all so pleased to see us. I gave a quick intro into GoodGym Barnet and GG more generally, before the rest of you wonderful runners explained a bit more. We then spent about half an hour chatting and sharing stories. The care home is being cleared at the moment for an upgrade and residents are slowly moving to other facilities, so there aren’t too many people left. Chris said this was the busiest the living room had been for quite some time and thanked us lots for coming and filling it with so much positivity.

She then offered us the common room to do our fitness session in before our run back to base, which was a massive treat! Exercising on carpet is definitely much nicer than tarmac and meant we could do a loads of fun exercises like burpies and squat walkouts. I know everybody loves burpies, secretly. And just look how high Hazel was getting in the picture above! BOOM

We did some squat and side-lunge walks followed by three rounds of full-body strength and conditioning exercises. There was a focus on core strength, because a strong core makes for all the difference as you take on those longer runs.

We then said our goodbyes and headed back to base, taking a slightly longer route home. Special thanks to Teje, Jess, Heather and Jeff for keeping me company at the back of the pack tonight.

After a quick stretch, Damian whipped out the homemade pumpkin seed flapjacks he brought along, which everybody agreed were yummy.

This week’s Barnet Biscuit of the Week is: Party Rings. Classic.

Freya has requested next week we find some ice gems. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

Don’t forget this Saturday is the GG Parkrun tour in Oakhill Park, which means it’s on our turf. So we should all go! It’ll be great if you can make it down. The run starts at 9am, there’s no pressure if you wanna go fast or you wanna go slow. If you’d like to sort your DBS checks out, bring your docs along and I’ll do it afterwards.

And Sunday is Zombie Evac. We’re in the 10am wave, so meet at Allianz Park at 9.30 to sort ourselves out. I’ve been offered a free ticket if anyone wants it in exchange for writing a review. They offered it to me too late and I’ve already bought mine! Book here if you wanna play.

Sign up for next week’s task here. We’ll be running to do good nearby. It’ll be fun and good and I’ll reveal more soon.

More pics to be added soon! Just waiting on the ladies to say it's ok.

20 energised GoodGymers ran 6k to One Housing to start the creation of their WellBeing Garden.

A huge congratulations to Clare, Dan and Mireille for there recent half marathon performances!

With it being Mental Health awareness week we were Running and Talking even more than usual on the 3k back street route past my old primary schools to One Housing. One Housing are an organisation that provides modern and high quality Housing for people with mental illness as well as provide support for the service users to enhance their quality of life.

We arrived and found that maybe let's say the right kinds of tools were not ready for us but we had energy and enthusiasm to hand! So armed with a ** Hammer, Golf club** we set about clearing as much of the over grown vegetation so that we would have space to do all the Landscape Art next week! ** Holly** our ** Head of Artistic Development** took charge of colour design and arrangement and is really looking forward to next week's pattern creation session!

Nine filled bin bags of weeds and out of control Ivey later we had smashed the task! Next week armed with the list I left we will have all the equipment to transform the Wellbeing Garden into a magical space!

On the 3.1k (upon Rich's request) run back to base we took a sneak peak into a building that we will hopefully become very familiar with in the coming months!! It looks like an epic project in size and intrigue! Look forward to getting stuck into that task in a couple of weeks!

A strong run back with a bit of a sprint finish rounded off by a few revitalising stretches saw finished off a top evening!!

We talked about dominating a 10k race in November! Here is the link to the Regents Park 10k for info and how to enter (slightly cheaper to enter on Bookit Zone). I will be running (assuming I have found my legs by then), be great to have a group getting out there and running well!! Will set up a Race on the GoodGym site next week.

Next week we will be back at the Wellbeing Garden and would love to have you along! Please sign up here as an added sweetener we will be going out after the run on mass to a food establishment where we will be able to replenish our fuel store post run! The monthly social is always fun and a great with great chat, would love as many people to come along as possible!!

Have a great active week!

Strong Smooth Tempo

Joel

23 brave Hackney GoodGymers ran an impressive 6k to Abney Park Cemetery to shovel, barrow and rake 4 tonnes of special gravel to create a path around the park.

On a moon lit evening in the enchanting Abney Park Cemetery we were ecstatic to welcome 5 newbies to the GoodGym Hackney fold! Loved having Ben, Steffica, Dominique, Lara, and Ramy along!!

Setting off on through the back streets of Hackney working our way the 3k up to one of our furthest locations of Abney Park Cemetery, which is one of the Magnificent 7 cemeteries in London. Where we got stuck at traffic lights we burst into some strength building action and knocked out 2 minutes of alternating lunges. Soon enough with a little navigation from our resident free running Coach Runner rep Andreana we had run 3k in 18minutes to reach Tom at Abney park.

With military precision Tom have 15 wheel barrows, a stack of gloves and a range of rakes and shovels waiting for us to get cracking with. We hot footed it down to gravel and got to work, 4 of us shovelling away loading up the barrows while 15 barrows safely navigated the spooky path up to the 5 rakers who modded the path creating a perfect camber for the rain to wash off. We set a steady and efficient pace with the keeping everyone working hard throughout! The 4 tonne mound of special gravel was going down nicely with excellent work from Will, Ros and Rich the barrow pushers kept a high leg turnover and kept coming back for more! While the rakers guided by Tom created 50 metres of path which is a GG Hackney best effort!!

With the gravel gone after 35 minutes of action we wheeled out way back up the main road, thanked Tom for his amazing organisation and begged him to let us come back for a GoodGym Halloween dress up special on the 1st of November (fingers crossed).

For the run back 10 steady eddies came with me and got going with some Cautiously aggressive running on the 3k run back to base while 13 speedsters completed 40 Lunges, 20 squats and 2 minutes of Ab planks before beginning the chase back to base!

Some impressive running from everyone saw us arrive back to base pretty much together so our Team stretch. We relaxed the muscles, wished the Cardiff Half marathon crew of Patrick, Anna, Dan, Nico and Jack (sorry if I forget anyone) the very best of luck on Sunday! I will be following you around and look forward to hear all about your races in the next couple of weeks!!

Looking forward to a big turn out for the Hackney Marshes GoodGym Parkrun tour on Saturday! All the information is here be a fun free 5k run and if you are able a breakfast after to.

Next week we are back to the unmistakable Gillett Square to finish off our work cleaning the Pop up Kids adventure playground equipment!! Would love to have you along for another fun filled Tuesday evening sign up here.

Thank you to Ros and Rich for the pun and Michele for some pictures!

Smooth and positive

Joel