Over the January Challenge, Area Activator Simon has been hosting weekly early morning run sessions in local parks (Islington and Tower Hamlets based) with Track and Towpath Run Club.

These workouts were developed to build our runners towards the Runthrough Victoria Park 10km on 1st February- great for building fitness over the difficult Winter months. We completed timed intervals around Emirates Stadium, hill reps in Finsbury Park, speedy laps of Bartlett Park, Poplar and tempo effort loops of Meath Gardens, Mile End. Always followed by hot drinks, snacks and socials (and before we need to head to work!).

To find out more, feel free to tale a look at our Strava group for future fortnightly sessions:

https://strava.app.link/G9QbhbBqp0b

On the day, we were lucky to be treated to really excellent running weather (mild, not windy, a pinch of rain here and there- pretty good for February!). The Runthrough Victoria Park race series hosts a half marathon, 10km and 5km on the same course, but at different start times, so we were able to cheer on fellow racers in the half marathon before we kicked off at 10am sharp.

Congratulations to Kim and Laura for clocking personal bests today!

And to Lucinda and John for achieving their season's best times too!

Keep your eyes peeled for more Track and Towpath race meet ups soon.

there must be some clutter free houses in Luton and beyond as several of our GoodGymers including Harvey from Ealing had a good clear out and took their unwanted items to a nearby charity shop.

Today was the final day for the Tub2Pub challenge and our area activator was keen to know from Gill, "Whatever happened to all those heroes?" No the GoodGymers didn't eat them all but had been collecting tubs from a school, a church and work colleagues. So we had lots of empty tubs to deliver to various Green King Lubs. Laura dropped hers at the Battle of Axes pub in Aldenham and gets the prize for getting round the margest number of pubs. Ella dropped hers at the Biscot Mill after our Wednesday group run, Lucie walked up to the Jolly Topers on Friday while Gill and Omar did a double whammy, dropping off lots of Heroes tubs at the Jolly Milliner after the litter pick and then walking/ cycling to the Biscot Mill with Teklay to make a final drop off after our charity shop task. Well done to all who have done the task this year, saving plastics from going in landfill and contributing to Macmillan Cancer care , a charity close to my heart.

1 Goodgymer attended to help with some cardboard boxes that had a life of their own and were threatening to take over! With a broken lift and 3 flights of stairs to the bin room this was the perfect task for someone that likes climbing mountains in their spare time. 13 trips x up and down x 3 flights = a great step count for the day but more importantly makes a start on addressing a difficult living situation for a family with support needs. It was only the start of what will clearly need to be a much bigger piece of work but hopefully the reduction of cardboard and bags of rubbish blocking their main escape route reduces the fire hazard and general risk to them.