15 awesome runners attended our Islington group run last night (including new starters Stephanie and Tom- welcome!), and braved a wet and windy trip to Sunnyside Community Gardens near Crouch Hill.

Also- congratulations to Hanry for running 100 good deeds last week. His celebrations were at GG Camden, but he is a certified GG Islington runner too!

Before layering up to sustain the rainfall, Trainer Simon asked the crew for some film recommendations (after being blown away by Bong Joon-ho's multi-oscar winning thriller "Parasite". All of these great suggestions have been included here:

• For Sama
• Call Me By Your Name
• Moonlight
• Little Women
• Okja
• Snowpiercer
• Alien Covenant
• Jojo Rabbit
• Precious
• Dark Waters
• The Witch
• Harriet (soon to be released in the UK)
• The Green Book
• This Year's Love (because it is all based in Camden...)

Sunnyside Community Gardens

Our team made their way up Hornsey Road after a quick warm up, with Steve Lee assisting as the backmarker. Upon arrival, we politely disturbed the meeting of the Sunnyside Gardens Trustees and met up with Anna, the volunteer coordinator. We wheelbarrowed a vast array of forks, spades and shovels (and gloves, of course) to the upper end of the gardens, and began work on creating compost for the upcoming spring planting season.

A small group started sieving woods and twigs out of the finer dirt and soil, before distributing the contents into different piles. Other goodgymmers used clippers to break down larger branches and small dead trees made the green waste into useful mulch, leaving the rest of our crew to lift the chips into a designated compost pile. A smooth production line was established, and we made significant work out of this large ongoing task!

We packed up after 40 minutes of solid work, and enjoyed the downhill jaunt back to the Arsenal Community Hub. Aidan lead a series of stretches and cool down exercises, whilst Steve Lee offered us some authentic holiday Turkish Delight, and Trainer Simon brought out some Biscoff biscuits for a job well done.

As we regrouped, we made our way to The Victoria Tavern on Holloway Road for 2-for-1 pizza, drinks and good times, as part of our monthly social.

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NEWS

GG Islington Cover at Goodgym Camden!

Trainer Simon will be leading a one-off group run with Goodgym Camden this Wednesday, setting off from The St Pancras and Somers Town Living Centre in Somers Town. Great opportunity to try out some GG tourism, and to meet up with new and familiar faces getting involved with some new tasks!

This week, we will be visiting Cecil Sharp House to assist with various gardening and weeding tasks at the home for English Folk Music and Dance, with a second group running to C4WS- a homeless shelter set up in the American International Church on Tottenham Court Road.

Typically followed by drinks and a meet-up at the Somers Town Coffee House pub, opposite the Crick!

Sign up here and come on down!

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Compton Terrace Gardens Community Mission

Saturday 14th March, 10-1pm at Compton Terrace Gardens. A perfect post-Highbury Fields parkrun task!

One of our lovely GG Islington task owners will be leading a work day at Compton Terrace Gardens, a great green space right outside the union chapel. Mission expert Liz Mills has agreed to lead the session along with some of the neighbourhood regulars to assist with clearing, tidying, lifting and shoveling work- super outdoors workout fun!

Sign up here!

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CREOS March

Sunday 15th March, 11-1pm at Crouch End Open Space, 85 - 87 Wood Vale, Crouch End. One of the longest running, and best, community missions. Come for the gardening, stay for for the picnic!

Crouch End Open Space is inviting the Goodgym team back to help with their monthly community green space maintenance project. Local volunteers meet up to keep the neighbourhood area as beautiful as possible, and to make sure that the pathways are accessible for everyone to enjoy this popular spot.

All helpers will be treated to a great carboot picnic and hot drink afterwards!

Sign up here to get involved!

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The Arc Centre Deep Clean and Free Fitness Session

Sunday 22nd March, 5.30-7.30pm at The Arc Community Centre, Islington

Goodgym have been asked to help out The Arc Community Centre with some bi-monthly cleaning and tidying tasks- a great indoor activity to wrap up the weekend.

In return, we have access to the main hall and the accompanying gardens before the the task. Trainer Simon will be offering a free all abilities circuit training session before we start with the cleaning duties. Strength and conditioning are under valued pursuits for a lot of runners, and we will be introducing some simple body weight exercises you can do as part of a group (the best way IMHO!) or in your own free time.

Sign up here for doing good and getting fit!

What a fab evening at Bexley Gooodgym last night. Yes it was the hottest Bank Holiday we've had for a few years but that didn't stop us doing our awesome in Bexley............. We were greeted by three new faces at Bexley this evening. A massive welcome to Lucy (you were brilliant tonight) and Goodgym tourists Sarah and Johnny who joined us from Hammersmith Goodgym, yay!! We started off as usual with our group warm up and in this heat that didn't take long. After a quick safety briefing everyone grabbed their pickers and we headed of towards the beautiful Danson park. As we arrived at Danson i wanted to to add a training into the task so the goal was to pick and jog and quickly as possible onto the next piece of litter. It turned out to be quite a good fartlek session. For those of you who are wondering, fartlek is a Swedish word meaning speed play Its an awesome training session for anyone wanting to become a better runner. It involves running and moving at different speeds during your training, and we did just that this evening.

Fartlek is a Swedish word meaning speed play

Well it has to be said we were extremely busy for over 35 minutes, and in this time we filled seven big black sacks of rubbish. We even had to move a portable BBQ that had been left and that had actually started to set the grass underneath it alight. As our challenged drew to and end we looked over the park at the task we had just completed with a great sense of accomplishment, and as the sun was coming down it was a perfect time to have a group run around the lake before heading back to basecamp Crooklog.

Coaches Tip Running with your litter picker sticks should not be seen as an inconvenience but as a great arm and chest training. Many of us run with our arms swinging side to side and crossing the centre of our chest. Doing this makes you body rotate with each step instead moving moving efficiently forward. It also closes our chest making our breathing labour. Use the stick with your hands as wide as possible. By doing this your arms can't come across your chest so your lungs / chest will be open, so making breathing and posture a lot better.

It wasn't long before we were back a Crooklog talking about the great task we had done, and what we had planned for next week. Thanks again for you help and company Sarah and Johnny. Tonights Bexley Goodgym Heroes Sarah, Susan, Janine, Caz, Johnny, Sarah, Lucy and Tim SEE YOU NEXT WEEK.................

As the nights draw in (yes, really) 21 runners covered 7km, swept away sycamore seeds, shifted, lifted, pulled and painted and enjoyed the view.

Every so often we get all excited and plan ahead for what we might do to celebrate a fellow runner's milestone, but sometimes someone might like to quietly put their head down and get on with it, without saying anything. Tonight Jacqueline did just that and completed her 100th good deed!! I only know this now, from looking at her Strava entry, 'My 100th GoodGym at the Seniors'. She's a cheeky one, sneaking that past us without saying. We're fond of a celebration here in Lewisham and WILL NOT be letting this one go without a knees up, so a social is now on the cards for the week after next. Congratulations Jacqueline, we're all very proud and very surprised at the same time :)

Thank you to Steve for the excellent - and apt - title pun!

Lots of our regulars are off enjoying the sunshine elsewhere at the moment, but very kindly keeping us updated, with daily photo updates of sunrise/sunset runs, poolside relaxation and red t-shirts on tour. Those of us still here in a slightly grey south east London (possibly due to the eclipse?) were undeterred by a bit of gloom and were all set for some hills. Joining us this week, all the way from the east was Ian, the trainer for soon-to-launch GoodGym Ipswich. We love welcoming new trainers and showing them the sights, so really put Ian through his paces by appointing him back-marker, along with Sean and Stephen, who are very familiar with the route to Seniors.

Before we headed out to warm up, we had a little celebration of milestones, with a grand presentation of three lovely black 50 t-shirts to Helen, Kim and Stephen, who have been waiting patiently to be able to show off their achievement. Well done you three, I can't wait to see you wearing your tops with pride.

The run over to Seniors is a longer one, but we love the extra opportunity to chat and catch up on the weekend's gossip. It's also a hilly run, but we ran hard and it was great to see everyone picking up the pace to reach the top, even if it was just 'to get it over with'. At Seniors, we were met by Cathy and Norma, who had a few different tasks waiting for us. Cathy went through the various jobs for tonight and everyone found a role and got stuck in. As you can see from the photos, the garden is vast, so there is ample opportunity to spread out and find yourself an area to work in. Tonight's jobs were painting the garden chairs (there are still many more to complete, but what a joy to see some (three) chairs being finished!) and sweeping up sycamore seeds - these pesky fellas are very good (and quick) at taking root and, before you know it, you've got a sapling to deal with.

At the far end, a team of gardeners set to, pulling up the bindweed, which had wound itself around anything that lay in its path, covering a whole area of ground around the raised beds. Along the side of the building were some pallets, which were carried over and laid down next to the existing beds, creating a foundation for some recycled art-handling containers, now destined to become raised beds themselves. In the middle of all this was a shed with a barbecue in it. This barbecue needed pulling out and, to do this, Sean and Michael pulled out everything else and had a jolly good spring clean along the way, great work!

That's an awful lot of work, completed in just half an hour, creating little pockets of transformation throughout the space.

Our return leg took us up and over (again, really well done on the hill climbing everyone, sterling work!). A trip to these parts wouldn't be complete without pausing to enjoy the view of a lit-up London from the top of Blythe Hill, just gorgeous!

Next week we will head out to Crofton Park Community Garden, to work on some more digging, shifting, weeding and so on. I will be away, so this run will be led for the first time by our run leader Conroy. Why not sign up and join in?

Rain didn't stop play for 20 GoodGymmers on this damp Sunday afternoon. With several first timers in attendance the first GG Islington of 2016 was a blast.

Following a much-needed warm up we split into two groups for our journey up to Grenville Road Gardens and arrived there a bit damp, but much warmer.

We were up there to help FROGG (Friends of Grenville Gardens) get the grounds ready for a beautiful spring ahead.

Having dished out forks and spades a couple of poor souls were left empty-handed, but newcomer Beth who lived just over the road rushed home to grab a couple of mini shovels and some gloves. Nice one, Beth.

Alex and Kate did a great job of collecting litter from deep within the garden's bushes while the rest of us spread out within the park and on the famous "GoodGym Strip" outside Timbuktu Adventure playground to plant various bulbs including bucket loads of daffodils and hyacinths.

Anna, Catherine and Natalia did an extra bit of good-doing by discovering a phone that had been lost in the gardens and seeking out its owner.

Can't wait until the spring to see the results of our efforts. Hopefully we'll be regular visitors to FROGG this year as we were last year.

Work done, biscuits munched and tools scraped off and neatly packed away we decided to get involved with some garden relays. To be specific, a two-set two-minute six-team three-person continuous garden relay. Since 3 doesn't divide nicely into 19 Paul "PB" Bown ran the whole thing on his own! Between sets we performed our famous arm driving drill and our running technique improved a few thousand percent.

It was back into two groups for the run back and then a stretch and Au Revoirs.

Biscuit of the day: Bumper pack of Dark Chocolate Digestives. Even Steve had one!

Debate Topic: New Year's Resolutions: a good idea or a load of old rubbish? Mixed opinions on this one, with the "load of old rubbish" getting the majority vote.

Great job from everybody involved. Skin is waterproof!

We're back again tomorrow. See you there,

Simon