15 warm and sweaty GoodGymers ran 5k to Gascoyne Estate community garden and carried 25 insanely heavy wooden boards, 200 bricks and a tonne of gravel on an epic evening of Fun on the Run.

Meeting in bright hot sunshine was a little unexpected but made for a lovely warm evening and helped keep the effort levels really high throughout the session! We were joined by Ed, Bina and Ollie for their first ever GoodGym run and hope to see you all again next week for some more Team Hackney action!! We celebrated the great Team Hackney turnout at the launch of the GoodGym/Parkrun partnership at Mile End Parkrun, including a new GoodGym course record for our super speedster (and pun master this week) Rich.

Setting off on the 2 and a bit K run to Gascoyne estate we taking in the sites of Victoria Park Village while leg swinging, lunging and skipping elegantly our way to a mobilising dynamic warm up as we travelled down the road. Sticking together as we made our way across Well Street common we entered Gascoyne Estate to meet Cerdic who explained about the epic lifting and carrying task as well as the community garden. The garden set in the heart of the estate is run by a legion of volunteers and grows a multitude of plants, vegetables, fruits and herbs half of which are given away to good causes. We got to work by recceing the route to the skip which we had all missed on the run in, then grabbing the first of many loads of bricks and running them back to the garden. We then set about the big Challenge for the evening, Team carrying rain drenched 25 huge thick wooden boards! It was a real graft as we hauled the boards 200m through the estate to the skip. On the way back from the the board run (drag) we supper setted the workout by carrying bricks from different locations on the estate back to the garden. As the boards disappeared in to the skip we had just enough time for a quick blast in carrying 25kg bags of gravel and sand to the bins in a race against time before the bags disintegrated and exploded! We got our creative and ingenious heads on to workout the be best way to carry these heavy but delicate bags. We employed the metal mesh method, mini wooden board stretched, old fashioned over the shoulder and pray technique and with a supreme effort from Ed some monster Wheel Barrow loads.

Finishing in the nick of time we said goodbye to Cerdic who thanked us for our super hard work and set off on the run back to base! We started off by splitting into 2 groups and working a kilometre worth of Indian File running where the person at the back put in a burst of pace to get to the front and repeated. We gathered for the second Kilometre of running effort on the Fartlek lamppost intervals where we alternated running hard and easy between lamppost all the way up Victoria Park Road. A top effort and some speedy bursts saw us fly back to base in perfect time for a static stretch out and silent round of applause.

Thank you to Peter for some pictures and have a top holiday!

Good luck and enjoy all your racing and training for the rest of the week! Look forward to seeing how you are going on Strava!

Next week we are off to a favourite task of ours, Abney Park Cemetery! We will be clearing a heap of vegetation and then sewing so oh so pretty wild flower seeds! Be amazing to have you along for the session! Please sign up here

We will be off on our monthly social after next weeks run so please come along for a bite to eat and extra special as it is a GoodGym Hackney goodbye to Kirstywho will be leaving us as she moves up to Manchester!

Smooth Flow

Joel

Firstly huge apologies for the late-ness of the drinks report...I think I have just about recovered!

So a whopping FIFTY ONE, yup, 51 of you turned up to celebrate the heroes of August and generally just let anyone that was listening that South London is the place to be! It was a fantastic sight to see with so many of you there to hear yet another ridiculous speech from myself and just hang out and be so "GoodGym-y"! Loved it!

As this is late I am going to keep it short so here's a recap on what was said:

Heroes

As ever, until the 30th September you can hit this link to see the heroes data in more detail!

James Poole topped distance with 574.8km...will anyone knock him off the top spot? We had some honourable mentions for Paul Bown and Patrick Luong who hit 320 and 267km respectively - some full-on marathon training happening for both those guys!

In what I have recently termed the 'Bristol Leagues' we had a non-Bristol winner! Most cheers given this month by one Simon Loughran (that's pronounced Lochran btw) with an incredible 2139 cheers - did he actually manage to lead any of his runs?! A small number of those must've found their way to our most cheered runner this month, with 256 cheers it's Paul Becker...from Bristol!

Topping the good deeds table last month we had a return for Patrick Luong with 21 good deeds, couple with all his marathon training that is a great achievement!

Now to the coveted most new runners in the last month award...continuing our trend of new boroughs winning this accolade it's... Wandsworth with 62 new runners in August! Congratulations and keep telling everyone about GoodGym so you can boost your area's numbers!

I had some issues with my 50s and 100s data last month so apologies if I've missed you off but otherwise a warm and very well deserved welcome to Cecilia to the Black T-shirt club with 50 good deeds and getting their wings with a wonderful 100 good deeds is Graham Atkins and Antonia Kanczula! Congrats and make sure you give them a cheer!

News

Two of our previous guest speakers completed their challenges in the last month – Melissa 'Moosenshoes' got thru her #runtheboroughs challenge and George 'Ironman' Bright completed his first ever Ironman in an incredible time of 10 hours and 28 minutes! Fantastic achievements!

We also had Danica Priest completing the Rejkjavik Half Marathon and the Race for life Half marathon, Sarah Moore joining her in the Race for Life Half – well done to you!

We’ve our last (official) race of the year coming up in Cardiff – we’re looking forward to that and a number of other races are taking places with marathons over the next month for a number of GG runners – good luck!

International Pun of the Month

A great set of puns this month, 10 on the long-list, we had 46 votes on the night and for their first ever win with 17 votes (37% of the vote)…

Only tools and (task) forces from Wandsworth!!!

Well done guys!

Right that is that, thanks again for all coming and apologies for the delay with this. Look forward to seeing you all next month, we’ll be in Angel, it’ll be my birthday – it will be a blast!

Cheers,

Pritesh

p.s. Also thank you to Anonymous who found the time to pen me a letter during drinks - see pic!

p.p.s Massive thanks to John for taking some photos on the night as I completely forgot!

15 super GoodGymers ran 5k to Gillet Square to wash down and hose down the amazing oversized adventure kids play equipment.

A super sweaty night in H Town saw the Crew begin with a huge congratulations for a number of Weekend Running PB's before setting out on a moving dynamic warm up as we lunged, skipping and leg swung across London Fields.

We navigated 2k through the Hackney backstreets and down Ridley Road market to outdoor energy hub of Hackney, Gillett Square! We were met by Hoola hoopers, skate boarders, as well as many interested onlookers. We grabbed the key to the container and got to work, unloading the massive kids play equipment and carrying it 100 meters to the hose pipe. Special big up to Kyla for not only running to the shop to get cleaning stuff but amazingly sourcing buckets to aid us hugely in the scrubbing endeavours. With ** Hadrien's** Herculean efforts to carry the kit over to the rest of the team and Eva's expert hosing the rest of the Team got busy scrubbing the kit down using the patterned Team Hackney production line method!

The kit was being washed, rinsed and stacked at a serious pace much to the appreciation of the Gillett Square onlookers, in 30 minutes we had completed the cleaning of 25 huge pieces of kit and we just had time to restack the kit back in the container before heading.

On the feel GoodGym high we decided to throw in some more Fitness Fun on the way back to base, so we took a detour to DeBeauvoir square to run in circles! Splitting into relay teams we fed our legs all the speed they wanted to with some excellent half and full laps of the urban track. 5 minutes of continuous Rep, Rest and Repeat saw us earn a steady trot back to base to take the total running up to a fantastic 5k for the evening.

A few static stretches and a Balletic spin saw us finish off a top session!!

Look forward to seeing you all again next week! Please sign up here as we take on an epic physical task on the Gascoyne Estate community garden!

Also a big call to everyone who is available on Saturday to come to the GoodGym/Parkrun partnership launch at Mile End Parkrun! All the info and sign up to the task is here. If you are a bit tight on time but fancy a Saturday morning run why not come along and just run the Parkrun?? Be great to see you there especially if you are GoodGym T-Shirted up!

Spinning Smooth

Joel

More to follow

On a beautiful warm summers evening 23 amazing GoodGymers ran 4K to the FoodGrowers Group on the Rhodes Estate to transport and lay over a tonne of mulch/compost as well as water the life back into 48 fruit trees on Queensbridge Road.

The evening started with a huge welcome to our new GoodGymers and some GoodGym tourists tasting the Team Hackney flavour for the first time!! 👏🏾👏🏽👏🏻👏🏿 The big announcement of the week was the new Parkrun/GoodGym partnership which will launch on the 10th of September at and after MileEnd Parkrun. If you fancy a timed 5k then a dose of GoodGym Goodness sign up here as an added incentive I hear the trainer for the GoodDeed is amazing!!😀😉

We took off to get our muscles activated and joints mobilised on a quick pulse raiser to the council buildings where we burst into a dynamic warm up and a series of balance developing and muscle strengthening lower body exercises including a dose of some Plyometric fun as we bounced our way to success. After this headed of on the the rest of the 2k run to The Rhodes Estate in Dalston to meet Amy. With a little panic when I couldn't find her all was good again so to celebrate we burst into some relay action to keep up the tempo!! A few sprints, some skips and a trail of walking lunges had up ready for some carrying action!

Splitting into 2 groups we had the waterers and the mulchers! Not to mention the diggers. Forming a slick action line to dug the soil into bags, boxes and wheelbarrows before speedily carrying/pushing them about 150 meters to the fruit trees on Queensbridge road! While the waterers did there thing filling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with water and expertly watering the trees. With a super sprint finish we managed to water and mulch 48 fruit trees to the exact tune of 1.5 tonnes of mulch and 150 gallons of water!! Great job team ⚡️⚡️💪🏽💪🏾💪🏼💪🏻🔥🔥.

As we were running a little late we had a shorter than normal options for the first race back to base so we ran a staggered race with the runners wishing to run a faster starting later and later then chasing the pack down with every stride!! Needless to say it was an epic battle all the way back with 2 disappointing exceptions, Nico and Rich the super speedsters decided to take a short cut to ensure victory was there's. We have seen this behaviour from Rich before but leading is Nico astray to is highly disappointing!! Lucky you don't don't educate the people of the future (oh my wait)).

A series of static stretches and ballet pirouette finished off a great session!

Next week we are off to Gillett Square to help maintain their amazing kids adventure play equipment!! Be amazing if you could come along sign up here.

A huge good luck to everyone running their goal running performances this weekend know we have a few Super speedy parkruns and a debut 10k over the weekend!! If you fancy joining the GoodGym race team to get money off race entries and an amazing Race Team Vest take a look and sign up here.

An early heads up that we will unfortunately be saying goodbye to Kirsty in a few weeks as she moves up North for a new and amazing new job😢😢 in tradition we will be heading out for drinks and food to say goodbye on the 20th of September. Be great if you could come along to our combined monthly social and leaving drinks/eat after the group run.

Have a top week,

Technically Smooth

Joel

More to follow

13 GoodGymers ran some super speedy relays and worked on their running form in a tip top Fitness 4 All session.

Starting the evening with a dynamic warm up to get the specific running muscles activated and loosening up the working joints. We then honed our running form working on body position, cadence and knee drive running up the Highbury Mountain!

Once our form was on point we swiched to continous relays where in teams of 3 we worked through the gears starting off in Gear 2 (10k pace) for 4 minutes, then to Gear 3 (5k pace) for 4 minutes, cranking it up to Gear 4 (1 mile pace)for a scortching 4 minutes of action before warming down back at Gear 2 for a final 4 minutes.

Great to see the huge effort put in by everyone, changes of pace between the gears and loving the hand stinging high fives!!

Hope to see you all next week! Sign up here