Not as many arround as last year, but a worthy 35mins round trip made it worthwhile to have one more accessible pavement.

33 Goodgymers ran between 6-8km to collect Christmas trees and move tons of soil for St Lukes Community Centre!

Welcome along to the newbies - Amy, Fiona and Anita - thanks for coming along guys.

In the news this week:

1. GG Starter Session next Saturday - bring your friends!!
2. Also people from GG Islington are doing Finsbury Park Parkrun on 26th February if you'd like to join.
3. There is a Community Mission helping Crouch End Open Spaces this Sunday, it ends with an epic picnic - come along :)

Woah it's our 4th birthday and we had a huge turnout! We started the evening by singing happy birthday to ourselves ha - nice!

Thank you very much for coming last night and over the last four years to GG Islington; it means a lot to me, the first trainer Simon and GoodGym Central. We've done lots of good in that time (over 5900 good deeds) and have run really far! Well done!

Last night we had two tasks:

Christmas tree collection:

James led a team of 10 people to Barnsbury area to collect up Christmas tree's, after last week's epic 125 tree's (arguably a GG record) and all the Islington Council pickups it was going to be a proper hunt!

Having running around the streets in Barnsbury and Caledonian Road areas the team collected a lovely 10 tree's to be sent over for recycling.

St Lukes - Earth Move:

After a 3km run down hill we arrived to help the wonderful St Lukes Community Centre, there were 23 of us to help and get stuck in!

The task was big but simple, the aim was to empty two huge planters of soil, then move those planters to their new positions outside the new shed! It took over 30 minutes to empty the planters of soil and the logs weighing them down; filling wheelbarrows, pots and tubs with soil. Meanwhile teams moved large garden pots and cleaned up.

One of those BIG TASKS!

Once the soil was emptied the next logistical challenge was moving the planters, this involved strength and smarts - luckily you guys had both! After they were moved we quickly refilled them with all the soil.

We returned home for a stretch, bourbon biscuits and a pub birthday party which included a quiz!

Thanks for coming everyone!

Sign up for next week here when we'll be helping the Met Police and Waterside Adventure Playground.

PB out

26 Goodgymers ran 4-5km to help Thornhill Square Gardens and Single Homeless Project with various gardening jobs

Welcome along to the newbies - Anna, Olivia, Heather, Jarmo, Tessa and Nina - great to have you join us!

In the news this week:

1. A massive well done to Ben who hit the magical 100 Good Deeds last night - woop woop! Ben has been coming to Islington GG for over 3 years and has made a huge impact.
2. Also more celebrations - well done to Lucy who hit 50 good deeds last night. Smashing her goal of hitting the milestone in under a year of attending - awesome sauce!
3. GG Monthly drinks are on Thursday 4th October at the Islington Townhouse in Angel - come along :)

After warming up we split into two groups heading to help the wonderful Thornhill Square Gardens and Single Homeless Project.

Thornhill Square Gardens Report by Aidan:

A welcome return to Thornhill Square Gardens for some of us this week and definitely a reminder that headtorch season is upon us!

Caroline took navigator role for the way there, weaving us through the streets of Islington to get us there safely. We had two beds which needed some TLC with a bit of weeding, edging and turning of the soil. Also some bushes which had got a bit wildly and needed some levelling to make them look smarter. Speedy running and speedy work meant we had time to help tidy up another plot before we broke for a chocolate finger break. Yum.

With a run back to base completed we still had time for a few cheeky hill sprints next to Emirates before a stretch out.

Single Homeless Project Report:

The rest of us ran up hill to Crouch Hill to help the wonderful Single Homeless Project, which provides accommodation, care and support to homeless people in our community. We met the wonderful Sam from the charity that told us we had lots to do over two properties on Ashley Road:

• Clearing beds of weeds and turning over the soil
• Tidying up and chopping back tree's and bushes along the pathways
• Bagging up all the weeds and debris we'd piled up

We've been helping the SHP a lot this year but this was our first time at this site, great to lend a hand! Over 30 minutes we got tons done for our local community - well done all.

Thanks for coming everyone, great evening helping our community in Islington. Next week we will be painting veg boxes for the Friends of Grenville Gardens (FROGG) - sign up here. Please bring a headtorch from now on to group runs!

PB out

Maybe it was Jo's talk of the Dutch Masters recently seen on a trip to Bruges before we set off, but the GoodGym Waltham Forest crew got their Rembrandt on big time today. Our mission was some interior decorating at The Mill, a magical community centre down the other end of the High Street.

Great to see GG tourist Ernesto (moonlighting from Islington) who was accompanied by the first timer and painting expert, Chloe. No time was wasted in getting to the destination after our usual conference, headcount and review of upcoming holidays we made a beeline for The Mill. On arrival brushes and rollers were distributed, masking tape was fastened, dustsheets were laid down and the paint was applied. The Mill's main meeting room began to gleam like Meghan Markle's teeth.

While the main body of our crew beavered away in the meeting room, we also had Ercole and Katie sanding, cleaning and painting blackboards and Jennie 'Rothko' Matuszek supported by Ramon who both did a fantastic job on the door frame of the errm latrine. Transforming the off-white woodwork into an intense shade of Dutch Orange!

All in all, I think these GoodGym artisans have paid a fitting tribute to the borough of culture with a fantastic bit of painting decorating.

But, the story doesn't end there. The precision of the painting was matched only by the speed the task was accomplished so we had time to kill, which meant time to drill. We headed south to the Douglas Eyre Sports Ground for x6 100 metre sprints with various routines (grape-vining, skipping, fast feet) on the returns.

With heart rates hitting the heights, we finally headed back (uphill) to Mirth, Marvel and Maud for merriment.