A whopping 45 Goodgymers gathered in Islington this Monday

A mass of goodgymers flocked to Highbury Pool this Monday, ready to get involved. We welcomed several first timers to GoodGym, why not go and give them a cheer and say welcome to Imogen, Caroline, Sarah, Laura, Susann, Wendy, Claire, another Imogen, Alice, Victoria and Emma.

Congratulations were in order for Patrick on his Berlin Marathon time as well as everyone who went to Cardiff Half Marathon on Sunday. Well done to everyone!

Farming fun at Freightliners

This week's task was with the wonderful people at Freightliners Farm. No one loves a visit to the farm more than GoodGym, even if it does mean shovelling some manure. As it is a short run plenty of people took on the challenge of a longer run with Graham leading the way with some laps of Highbury Fields. The rest of us were too eager to see the animals and headed straight for the farm.

Graham describes the longer run:

A group of hardy GoodGymers set off to up the pace and distance with a few extra laps of Highbury Fields before starting.

Following a few warm up drills (featuring high knees, tail flicks, walking lunges, and sprints, and my best attempt at something resembling an army drill), we headed off to get the extra distance in.

Brilliantly, everyone did at least an extra two laps and upped their workout with an extra 2k - nice! Given the number of people who did extra laps in total, I reckon we did at least 50 laps of Highbury Fields collectively. That's about 10 parkruns, and longer than marathon distance - excellent job team!

With the extra laps under our belts, we ran over to the farm where remarkably we didn't get lost. Well except for that one-bit-where-we-ran-5m-past-a-turn-but-that-totally-doesn't-count. Which as any Islington regulars will tell you - a pretty big success given my navigation skills! A pre-task running session success.

We may have had a big group, but there was no shortage of work to be done and by golly did we tackle it. With wellies and gloves at the ready the first group got stuck in shovelling a mountain of manure into sacks. Working in pairs they tackled the task with gusto. Great job! By the time everyone from the longer run joined there was plenty more work to be done. There were groups:

• Shovelling manure

• Shovelling compost

• Transporting 60 bags of manure (and then taking another 20 bags)

• Sanding a table

• Sweeping the courtyard

• Cleaning the paths

• Weeding the paths

• breathe

Phew, amazing work! And of course a special shout out to the Torchbearers, which has become a bit of a regular task now that Winter is coming, without them we can't see a thing!

It wouldn't be a trip to the farm without meeting the animals so before leaving there was plenty of time to say hello. Once we were all cleaned up we set off back in three groups for a quick run back.

Only in Islington...

Going with the farm theme, the debate this week was "What is the best farm animal?" Going for a very democratic voting system of shouting your answer goat was definitely heard the loudest.

Keeping the farm theme alive, biscuits of the week were a childhood favourite Animals and a random find of Zoo biscuits. Both going down very well post run.

What next?

• This month's drinks are on Thursday 6th at the Islington Townhouse in Angel. Local to us so come along! More info here.

• If you're too committed to the running to be drinking then why not try a Fitness 4 All training session in Camden, also on Thursday. More info here.

• If I haven't tempted you by either of these then we will see you next week!

Awesome effort everyone!

Aidan

Welcome

Welcome Alison and Sophie doing their first runs this evening and hello to Becky and Laura who are quite the tourists having visited Peckham, Brixton and Kings Cross . A very warm welcome to GoodGym Highbury.

Well Done

Well done Danica on breaking 2 hours at the Richmond Half Marathon. After a string of bad luck and getting ill on race day she executed perfectly and smashed it. She was also sporting a lovely new haircut.

:) and :'(

And we welcomed back Caitlin! Caitlin recently achieved her 50 good deeds black t-shirt. Most of these have been done by visiting her coach. Give her a big cheer. Unfortunately Caitlin and Ryan are off to Amsterdam now so we won't see them any more :( BUT, there is a certain former GoodGym Camden trainer who is now based over there, so who knows, we may see GG Amsterdam before too long.

FROGG

It's been a while since we visited Grenville Road Gardens. Tonight we were helping FROGG (Friends of Grenville Road Gardens) cut back and bag up some ivy.

Since there were so many of us we split into two groups and each took turns doing 10 minutes of working and 10 minutes of exercising.

Ivy

Yep, the job for the evening was to get rid of ivy which had started to take over a bit. Tugging, pulling, yanking, chopping, lopping. Whatever we did it looked much much much clearer afterwards and Sarah was delighted with our efforts.

Flipping Mad

Meanwhile the group that was exercising played a game of "Heads and Tails".

A list of paired exercises, one easy and one tough, was produced and everybody had to choose Heads or Tails.

Following a coin flip those that guessed correctly got to do the easy one and those that FAILED had to SUFFER with the hard exercise. Ow. There were burpees (GROAN), press ups, alternate squat thrusts, reverse lunge high knee posture drive drill thingies. Mental stuff.

Hop To It

Thoroughly thoroughly warmed up after all that tossing it was competition time. How far can you leapfrog. Using a cone to mark the furthest distance, everybody had a go.

In the first group Will managed the furthest with a massive... erm, we didn't measure it but it was long. In the second group, Graham who jumped first was in the lead UNTIL Hugh equalled his effort. A jump off saw Hugh take the win.

The prize for being such a bounder? What else but a Freddo Frog!

Back to the Pool

For the way home we split into three groups. Caroline and Mel took an easier paced group, Steve led a medium pace and Simon took a gang on a faster run including a lap of letter fartlek around Emirates for good measure.

Double Debate

Back at base we voted on the DOUBLE DEBATE. Yes, that's right, we had two debates tonight. The first: what's better? Frogs or Toads? Frogs won, but a surprisingly large number didn't give a monkey's.

Second debate: is GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) pronounced witha hard or soft G? Well, the inventor says it is a soft G, but it does stand for Graphics which is a hard G, but then We don't pronounce the P in JPEG (Joint Photographics Expert Group) as an F? None of this matters, it went to the vote and the hard G won it. As is often the case at GG Islington everybody was wrong. Will suggested "Zhyff".

Next Week

To celebrate the end of Summer we are going to Sunnyside Community Garden next week. Be there!

Love and hugs,
Simon

Welcome

Welcome this evening to Olivia, Charlie and Amanda. Great to have you along helping out.

Graham

Massive news! Graham did his 100th good deed last night. Give that man a cheer! Graham's a member of our taskforce in Islington and also en route to becoming a run leader. A specialist in scenic routes, he's led plenty of groups and often writes mini reports and supplies us with photos. Despite going against GG Islington's wishes and shaving his 'tache off we still love him. Hero!

So, three tasks tonight! Caxton House, Single Homeless Project and Barnsbury Community Centre.

Barnsbury

The Barnsbury contingent's main task was to assemble two hose carriers. We thought we'd have this wrapped up in no time, but forgot that instructions for self-assembly kits are usually written by drunk people. Richard F. decided it should be girls versus boys and we split into two teams.

As if dodgy instructions didn't make it difficult enough, about 5 minutes into the task we started getting bitten by little flying gits. So itchy today. Soooo itchy! Nobody's ever been this itchy in the history of GoodGym. Those wearing tights looked on smugly.

We declared it a draw when neither team quite finished thanks to some very stubborn wheel fittings. We got very close though and somebody will be along today to steal our glory by giving them a good smack with a hammer. Those hoses will definitely be appreciated. We know from personal experience how long it takes to water the garden with cans.

Before heading back we did a bit of speed-weeding before we were just too bitten-up and itchy to carry on and had to escape. On the way home we stretched our legs out with a game of secret surges and had a couple of sprints. Speedy!

Caxton

Another group headed up to Caxton House. Aidan explains:

Lots of GoodGymmers took the Caxton House run this week, so many that we could split into two groups!

Patrick took a group doing a medium pace and Graham led a faster paced group. Graham's group started with a lap of Highbury Fields onto a trip up Holloway Road with Lucy and Graham racing the finish to Caxton House, whilst Patrick blasted the tunes taking the steady incline up to Caxton House. Rose was ready for us with some much appreciated water.

We've been doing some great work at Caxton House over the last few weeks and today was no different. The benches needed a final coat of paint and the battle against the weeds continued. The benches were looking fresh and pristine by the end and we are sooooo close with the weeding. One more week and we'll be ready to fill in the gaps with sand. The end product will be awesome.

Patrick's group set off first leaving the others to brush and tidying up. After a quick goodbye we were following them into the sunset to Highbury Fields and a well deserved biscuit. Great work as always everyone!

Aidan

SHP

Yet another group went over to SHP. Caroline tells us what went down:

5 of us had a nice jog up to Single Homeless Project. We have been there a few times recently and it was really nice to help there again.

The team did full mission weeding in the garden and collected leaves from the front (Autumn is coming early this year!). On the way back we got nicely distracted by cute kitties but we did an extra lap of Highbury Fields. Well done team!

Caroline

Boring Biccies

We had our cheapest ever biscuits: 34p from the corner shop that's closing down. They were also the most boring ever biscuits: Morning Coffee. Won't be getting them again. Can anybody find a cheaper biscuit?

Muppets

Our big debate question was about the biggest muppet in athletics (track and field). So many people voted for Ryan Lochte that we made him an honorary track and field athlete. But let's not forget Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad who, when not beating up 14-year-old mascots, can be found stealing bronze medals. There were a couple of other votes, but these guys are too nice to put down in a run report.

We'll see you next week for more cheap biccies, red-hot debate, fitness fun and glorious goodness,
Simon

First of all a big big welcome to our first timers this evening: Pip, Will, Christina, Amanda and Laura. Great to have you all along.

New Barnet trainer Pennie was on the scene tonight leading proceedings in preparation for the GoodGym Barnet launch tonight.

Following the briefing and the look of amazement on Pennie's face as the group pointed out that she had a whistle attached to her rucksack, we set off on our two tasks. Aidan and Patrick were in charge of taking a team up to Caxton House to carry on with what we started last week. Aidan describes what went down:

5 Goodgymers took the challenge of a longer and faster run. We set off just after Patrick's group but immediately detoured to do a lap of Highbury fields, with the noise of a Corbyn rally in the background. We started as we meant to go on, at a nice fast pace. Taking the usual route past Emirates where we enjoyed the late night sun and of course the gentle incline all the way to Caxton!

We made it there with a great pace, but sweaty and out of breath, and Rose put us to work. Today's jobs were a second coat on the benches we painted last week and continuing to de-weed the brick path. With Patrick's group close behind us (we had beat them there of course!) we soon had a sea of red painting the benches a duck egg blue and plenty of weeds flying in the air.

Still plenty to do at Caxton House, so I'm sure we will be back next week to see the lovely Rose again. For the run back we gained Dan who wanted to join and also suggested a sneaky detour to Emirates. Everyone had the option: 1/3 lap run or 2/3 spartlek and of course everyone chose the harder 2/3 option!

Great group run guys!

Aidan

And Pennie led the rest of us to Barnsbury Community Centre.

We spent a good 25 minutes on a variety of tasks: adding compost to hanging planters, watering the plants, getting rid of some nasty weeds and painting pallets.

Post-task Pennie took everybody through their paces with a variety of drills and exercises: high-knees, planks and a gruesome squat/tuck jump combination was on offer. Barnet are gonna get pretty fit!

We (almost) broke tradition and had a cheesecake instead of biscuits tonight (but cheesecake does have a biscuit base). It tasted pretty good post-run. We also debated whether cheesecake is cheese or a cake (thank you, Caroline). A few voted for cheese, Steve abstained, some said pudding/dessert, but the majority reckoned it was a cake. Yum

Pennie will see you tonight and we'll see you back in Islington next week.

Simon