It's our first Goodgym Islington group run after the January challenge, and we kept up the great work with an excellent task! I'm sure many have heard that the entire GG community absolutely smashed their ambitious target of 8,000 good deeds all across the country.

15 lovely Goodgym folks (including a new member, Lizzy- welcome!) joined us at the Emirates hub tonight for a trip to Caledonian Park. Before we started our warm-up, we performed the weekly count-off and asked the question: "Do you have a pet?". The answers were as follows:

• No. I can't even look after a plant.
• No, but I definitely want a dog.
• Yes. A tabby cat called Kyra.
• I used to have an African Land Snail.
• I used to have two rabbits called Sargent and Pepper.
• Tess, a Staffie Lurcher.
• Mo the Cocker Spaniel.
• I have a funeral urn of my cat.

We performed a series of dynamic warm up exercises outside to get the blood pumping (ankling, high knees, lunges, pogo jumps), and then we ran a lap around the two sloped ramps up to the Emirates stadium itself. The first runners back were told to continue running up one of the ramps a second time, and to continue doing hill repeats until the final runner had completed the lap.

Caledonian Park

Our crew jogged their way up Mackenzie and Market Road towards the park, and we met up with Miriam, the lead volunteer co-ordinator on the way. Wheel barrows, shovels and rakes were picked up from the safe storage location, and we made our way to the Clock Tower. We were told that the inaugural Calendonian Road Junior parkrun was a real success, and we were congratulated for our involvement in creating new paths to allow it to happen (and for volunteering for the original recce event). More information about Cally Junior parkrun can be found here.

All of the tools were wheeled down to the forest trail path section of the park, which Goodgym Islington has helped to maintain in the past. Large piles of concrete grit and composted wood chip had been left for us to spread across the dark woodland, with the intention of making the wooded paths safely accessible for all visitors.

Our team were separated to set their tasks- we had a group dedicated to shoveling the concrete grit and wood chip into wheelbarrows, and then others depositing the material in different locations around the park. Hanry and Jack took it in turns to sprint from place to place with their wheel barrows (possibly trying to resemble rally drivers). The wooded path was illuminated with scattered light from Goodgym head torches throughout the evening.

After taking a quick photo or two in front of the lovely Victorian clock tower, our runners made their way back to the hub again, and Graham demonstrated some cool down stretches whilst Trainer Simon picked up some celebratory biscuits for a task well done!

NEWS!

Market Road Tennis Courts and Metro Blind Sport

Goodgym have been invited to get involved with the Metro Blind Sport Annual Tennis Competition this year. The task would involved offering assistance to these amazing players, helping out as a ball person and generally being excited to watch some great tennis!

The tournament commences on Saturday 9th February, and we are looking for help bethween 11am-2pm, and 2pm-5pm.

Sign up to the 11am-2pm slot here, and sign up to the 2pm-5pm slot here.

Trainer Simon's 100th good deed (+ Pizza and Drinks)

After our next group run at Mildmay Community Centre and Newington Green next Monday (10th February), we are planning on visiting the Victoria Tavern on Holloway Road to enjoy our monthly social (with pizza and drinks), and to celebrate Trainer Simon's 100 good deed (his first was at GG Tower Hamlets some time in 2016).

Come and join us at 8.45pm, and sign up here for more information.

Special Market Road Gardens Weekend Task

We are planning on returning to one of our most popular tasks at Market Road Gardens on Saturday 15th February, starting work at 11.30am (great post-parkrun activity). The plan is to continue building the main accessible car park and gardens at the entrance of the Lumpy Hill Adventure playground. Local volunteers will be present from 11.30am- 4.30pm, so feel free to pop in and help!

Feel free to sign up here.

Despite Monday afternoon being a complete wash-out, 20 brave Goodgymmers joined us for our double task group run, and were treated to a much pleasanter working conditions! Plenty of regulars, and a few folks back for a new year of Goodgym deeds, starting their 2020 tasks this evening. Always welcome and hugely appreciated.

Before our warm-up and run to our tasks, we performed the count-off, and Trainer Simon asked the question: "What was your first job?"

The answers were as follows:

• A "newsboy" in Harrogate, N.Yorkshire
• Newspaper boys x 6
• Ticket tout (before I knew it was illegal)
• Ballet tutor for little ones
• Cold caller for an insurance company
• Underage barperson x 2
• I sold socks
• Pot washer
• Car washer around my local neighbourhood

We performed a few warm-up drills outside the Emirates community hub (high knees, straight legs, abducter twists, lunges and squats) before separating the team into two groups. Group 1 set off on their way to Caxton House near Archway (approx 6 km of total running), and Group 2 made their way to Market Road Gardens (approx 2 km total running/walking).

Caxton House

Upon their arrival, Group 1 met up with volunteer co-odinator Rose, and immediately got to work around the community centre. Some of our Goodgymmers set about clearing the entrance stairway from leaves and debris for easy, safe access for visitors- they made swift work of this with brooms and hand brushes. In the mean-time, the rest of the group tidied up the indoors of the hall, and helped with pulling staples out of walls, ready for a new children's project to be posted up.

This was just the start of a big deep cleaning task, so we are likely to return to Caxton House very soon.

Market Road Gardens

Group 2 jogged over to meet Franie of Octopus Communities (and friend of Market Road Gardens and Hayward Adventure Playground), and to continue our project from last week. The vehicle access route for Hayward Adventure Playground needed to be broadened to allow large buses and coaches to drive right up to the site, and to do so safely. This would make unloading children from vehicles easier and safer. Our team started to lay down tarpaulin sheets on top of the access path, and added hardcore and rubble on top of the sheets to create a sturdy, non-skid surface for vehicles. Our goodgymmers loaded wheelbarrows full of heavy concrete fragments, and easily distributed it onto the originally very muddy section of the park.

The garden is really starting to look lovely- 1600 bulbs were planted by children from local schools in this park, and we can't wait to see what the place will look like in Spring.

We all set off back to the Emirate hub to enjoy some more New Zealand biscuits from James, and a few stretches to cool down after our runs.

NEWS

Tom McCann's Great North Run

GG Islington regular Tom McCann is supporting the National Autistic Society by running the Great North Run this year.

The NAS are an essential charity organisation that transforms the lives of the 700,000 autistic adults and children (and their families) in the UK. They strive to change attitudes by improving public understanding of autism and helping businesses, local authorities and government to provide more autism-friendly spaces, deliver better services and improve laws.

Tom's Justgiving page is here if you would like to donate to this great cause.

5 years ago, Simon Loughran (a different Simon to our current trainer Simon) used to drive his car to Highbury Fields Leisure Centre, and offer to leave Goodgymmers bags in his boot whilst they ran off to complete tasks in the local area (in fact, here is the very first GG Islington run report from the launch event!). This was when the first pack of biscuits were offered to hungry runners, and the tradition lives on today (in our nice warm Emirates Stadium start point).

Excellent turnout last night, with 22 people runners in total (including our new starters Esme, Nikki and Lawrence- Welcome folks!). Our meeting room was full of conversation about race training, a weekend full of community missions and of course, anniversary curry celebrations. On this theme, we used the count-off to ask our runners: "What is their favourite curry/Indian food?"

The results were as follows:

• Anything Saag
• My Dad's strange tangerine slice curry experiment- It was actually really good!
• Naans, for the carbs
• Oh, yeah. Definitely naan. Garlic naan.
• Black Lentil Dhal
• Samosas
• Onion Bhajis
• Lager
• Chicken Tikka Masala- origin Glasgow!

Market Road Gardens

We performed a few warm up exercises on the Emirates slope to raise heart rates and body temperatures before jogging down Benwell Street towards Market Road Gardens. We were met with a very well organised array of tools and wheel barrows all set up and ready to be used! Straight into the task ahead.

A series of large builders merchants bags had been deposited on the sides of the vehicle entrance to Market Road Gardens and Lumpy Adventure Playground. Frequent trampling by coaches and minibuses over time has left the ground really slick and muddy, so our intention was to lay as much rubble onto the edges of the main access route as possible to stop this from happening.

Team 1 set to splitting open these bags and pouring them onto the necessary surfaces, and whilst other runners leveled out stone and gravel with rakes. Sheets of protective tarpaulin had to laid down first, before the contents of the bags were spilled onto the ground, to separate the stone from the mud.

Team 2 picked up the available wheel barrows and shoveled some fine concrete dust into them (this was a continuation of a previous task). This dust was then transported to a pedestrian walkway, and laid out for other Goodgymmers to rake and flatten.

Although our original intention wasn't to open all of the bags (as many as we can in the time we had available), our Goodgym group absolutely smashed it, and we left the site with a completely level vehicle access path. We are planning on having another group run here next week to completely finish the job, but we made an amazing amount of progress in a short amount of time!

Standard Tandoori

We made our way back to the Emirates for a series of stretches and some genuine New Zealand biscuits provided by James Gilbert after his Xmas travels.

To celebrate the 5th Anniversary of GG Islington, a reservation was made at Standard Tandoori on Holloway Road specially for our group runners. We had the restaurant completely to ourselves, and were served some absolutely delicious curries, vegetable sides, poppadoms and naan breads. Definitely worked up a proper appetite after some solid Goodgym work!

Congratulations for 5 years everyone, and see you all next week!

A rare opportunity to catch up on a Sunday for some Goodgym goodness! It was so lovely to see so many familiar faces from different Goodgym boroughs in the same room. But equally wonderful to see some new/returning runners! Welcome to Sarah, Tamsin, Tessa, Louis, Elena and Neil.

The Arc Centre

We met up in a really smart residential community centre just off Essex Road (which is also GG Islington's 2nd meeting point for Bank Holidays and occasional football match days at the Emirates stadium), and helped ourselves to some complimentary teas and coffees left for us by Sally, the volunteer coordinator. This was much appreciated, as a crew of us had just walked over from Highbury Fields after a session of Xmas tree hunting, and we were a bit chilly to say the least! Before setting off for our warm up and fitness workout, we did the count-off, and asked each other "What is your favourite confectionery?" (inspired by Liz offering orange chocolate and magic stars for everyone).

Here were some of our favourites: * Malteasers and all Malteaser related products * Ferreo Rocher * Tangfastics * Kinder Chocolate (all products) * Creme Eggs * Sherbert Lemons * Pear Drops * Licorice Allsorts * Trek Bars * Vego (the greatest vegan chocolate known to man)

Paarlauf (It's Swedish for Pairs Running)

Before our main fitness session, we performed a few warm up drills to raise our heart rate (ankling, high knees, can-cans, fast feet), and then added a few dynamic stretches to engage the quads and glutes (lunges and sumo squats). We finished up with a few abducter twists and some pogo jumps before heading outside to Union Square Gardens, just opposite the community centre.

We gathered together at the entrance of Union Square gardens, and our runners all paired up and allocated each other to be "Runner 1" or "Runner 2". Runner 1 runs around the park in a clockwise direction at "some pace" (this can vary for every runner, but I would recommend a 70% effort). Runner 2 runs/jogs/walks around the park in an anti-clockwise direction at a recovery pace (significantly easier than the 70% effort). As the runners make their way round, they will meet up with each other and switch their paces by performing a high-5. This interval session was timed for 5 minutes and everyone got a high-5 by the end of it!

Thank you to Abi and Patrick for volunteering to look after everyone's belongings during the main session.

For additional information about Paarlauf running sessions, click here.

Deep Clean

After a solid fitness session, our runners returned to the Arc Centre, and prepared to give the place a really good clean. We filled up some buckets with hot water and bleach, picked up some protective gloves and started to clean the walls in the main room, the connected hallways and another activity room towards the end of the building. Trainer Simon and Patrick battled with a Dyson hoover in need of a new dust-free cylinder, but got it working in no time. We did an awesme job of removing marks, grubby hand prints and crayon scribbles from all the surfaces, and we even had time to give the floors a bit of a mop.

Really satisfying work! Well done everyone- Hopefully we will return to the Arc Centre for more community missions in the next few months.

NEWS

Caledonian Park junior parkun test event

We have been invited to volunteer for a recce for the proposed Caledonian Park junior parkrun, a 2km free weekly timed run for children aged 4 to 14, started every Sunday at 9 am.

This is really exciting for GG Islington regulars, as we have been involved with various tasks in Cally Park leading towards this parkrun!

Sign up here to get involved with this special event, Sunday 19th January at 9 am (please arrive by 8.30 am).

This will not be listed on the main event page, so feel free to send the link to this page for any interested Goodgymmers!

First CREOS community mission of the year!

Easily GG Islington's most popular Community Mission, helping out the Crouch End Open Space charity workers with gardening and maintenance of their lovely plot just off the Parkland Walk.

Sunday 19th January, starting at 11 am, and often finishing with a picnic and snacks in a beautiful woodland setting. What's not to love?

Click here for more information, and to sign up!