My health and safety advice was met with a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. I thought the suggestion that we should "lift with our knees" was pretty sensible, Hilary and Nick had different ideas. From their reaction I thought the piece of advice I'd been given in every health and safety talk in any manual labour type setting had been an elaborate hoax... opinions varied across the group... anyway, lots of lifting was indeed required as we headed to the Education Links school, where we were greeted by Mark who is a trustee of the school.

The mission, clear some space on the outer walls to make room for a new mural to cover the entire front of the building. Some other items for disposal had also been organised outside the school for chucking in a big skip. Classic goodgym fare. The team (8 strong, good turn out!) divided and conquered, plenty of smashing stuff into smaller bits along the way, elbow grease required, and got the job done.

Many thanks to our host Mark who gave us really clear direction and explained some of the context of what the work will facilitate in terms of the new mural and how the kids at the school will benefit.

Hope to see you all next week superstars!

A late change of plans this week meant we had a slightly different task - distributing GoodGym flyers! Not only did this help us to promote GoodGym in the local area and hopefully attract some new members - but we also achieved the WORLD RECORD for speediest flyering ever*, showing off skills clearly learned on previous tasks for Cody Dock and FoodCycle.

This also meant an added bonus of a quick post flyering social in the Print House, discussion topics covering everything from Tomb Raider to corporate culture and a possible return visit to Rockband Karaoke very soon.

Thanks everyone for a great turnout at short notice this week. Stay tuned for details of next week's task!

*Guinness World Records will get back to us on this one.

Well done everybody for this week’s task helping care4calais organising their donations.

Four of us met at the start point, with two joining us at the task.

Great fashion find this week was a pair of half leopard print jeans. Why would anyone give them up?! (Kitten/pirate tshirt is still there in case anyone’s wondering).

Two volunteer police officers amongst us making sure we felt super safe, with some discussion of getting the tasers they’re now entitled to.

Favourite national days was the thought provoking random weekly question this week, prompted some discussion of whether pancake day counts, world book day was a contender and no trousers on the tube got honourable mention. It was actually national homemade soup day on Tuesday… so.. y’know….wow.

Hackney adventure playground next Tue evening, so if you’re up for some adventure…

Last night, the GoodGym Newham team gathered to support Care4Calais in sorting clothing donations for people seeking asylum across East London. It was a great session filled with teamwork and care, and we made a real dent in the pile of bags that we were tasked with sorting out.

A special mention to Gina, who joined us for her first-ever GoodGym session! It was fantastic to have you on board, we hope you enjoyed it too - and you'll be able to make use of future sessions to help with your training for Hackney Half!

Also big thanks to Adam for getting us in...

Well done everyone! We should be back there in the next few weeks, but in the meantime we've got some litter picking lined up for next week with the Friends of Chandos Road Gardens - sign up here.