A sensational six Goodgymers, pounded pavements, hopped over hills and ran ragged to clean up a particularly filthy community hall for the marvellous Harlesden Methodist Church. POW POW.

Chill was in the air but not on our minds, as the always motivated Brent crew gathered for the first GG of December. With the glorious hellos and welcomes of housekeeping complete, the team wrapped up and rolled out into the night for a quick dash 2mile tempo-run down to Harlesden High Street.

With our resident maple leaf lovely Andrea leading the pace from the front, we drank in all of the sounds and smells of the bustling community along the way. Steaming up the hills and pushing pace, the team blasted the first 2 miles in an 18min record time, even with traffic light stops and people dodging to boot! EPIC

Arriving at our destination Harlesden Methodist Church we stretched and caught breath before being welcomed into the INDOOR TASK Woo hoo!!!! Always a win, when winter has set in.

Heading straight up the stairs led by the charismatic caretaker, we gathered our cleaning equipment ready to take charge of the community hall, where windows were in need of a jolly good wash and frames were overdue restoration from grey to white.

Hot to trot, underneath the blasting heat from all of... well ALL the heaters in the hall, the team set to work on the 40min shake down. Of course the soundtrack of the eve was set in play and this Monday night, we wiggled our way through the 'Coach Ellie happy-mix' delights of - Katrina and the Waves and Shola Ama old skoolfun for everyone.

We were walking on sunshine indeed, as Dan's massive efforts to sparkle up the floor added to the clean, sheen and pristine work Tabitha, Debs and Enrique added with the windows.

With the sparkling hall beginning to gleam again, we buffed and shined our way through the last of the panes, to the end of our time, giving our best impressions of regional accents, Enrique completely outshining me in the Scottish department and Andrea giving us a schooling in the intricate art of the Canadian linguistic trait of asking a question at the end of every sentence!!

Good times and good work complete, we tidied and turned on our heels quicker than church mice diving for cheese. Or on our case, cheesy tunes.

Blasting the last 2miles home as quickly as we had shot out, it was a night for pushing PBs and boundaries and the team did it all with smiling faces and encouragements for each other all of the way! Back at base it was stretch and fetch the bags. Another night complete and Goodgym good-tasking sprinkled through the community we love.

See you next time Xmas Party people....

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPRE.

7 Brent Bandits, braved the cold, followed a Goodgym-paper trail, made it to the track and destroyed some laps!

It was by far the coldest run of the year, well and truly into winter now when 7 smiling faces greeted me at the Queensbury this Monday night. With Enrique and his ladies making up the ranks - Sister sledge (Tabitha and Deb), the ever hilarious Samina and brilliantly cheerful Liz, we also welcomed to the mix our 'out of towner' for the night - Delightful Deb from Bristol, who was completing her round of Goodgym bucket list jaunts.

So with our bi-monthly track session in sight we could tick one off the list for Deb as she had never ever stepped foot on an athletics track, or for that matter ran on one!!! EEEKKKKK A treat was in store.

The task to accompany our fitness fun, was the regular GG Brent leaflet drop, but this time with a twist.... Each member was also tasked with bringing an extra slice of Goodgym cheer to the mix by making their leaflet accepter smile while explaining what we were all about and how we supported our local area. Success was in the air and we recruited at least 6 new locals for next week! YAY

Speeding down the high road and over St Peter's Hill, it was not long before the red racer was in sight and this week there was only one goal in mind - SPEED Stop clocks at the ready our awesome athletes set to pace on their first 400m dash, followed by not one, not two but three more!!!

Timing is simple, clock how fast you can run the 400, recover for 2 minutes, then repeat. Little did the team know that 4X round = 1mile and so as they embarked on their smashing times, each one able to keep their laps within a 10second range (AMAZING!!) with huffing and puffing their efforts came to a close..... now time for the maths!

Calculators at the ready we added up the timings and so everyones shock and delight, there were 1mile time trial PBs all over the place. My ultimate favourite moment was when Deb from Bristol said in disbelief when presented with her 7minute mile achievement, "This can't be correct, I've only ever run 9minute miles!!" Well believe it sister you are more capable than what you think!

Track is an amazing way to challenge your speed and short distance recovery rate in the view that regular sessions will translate to faster speeds in your endurance pace. And despite the disbelief in my maths skills by the crew, the calculator doesn't lie YES You really are all that awesome!!

With joyful cheer at the accomplishments made and statue challenge shutterbug achieved, the team bounced out (and I mean literally about 5 minutes of mad jumping around) ready to run the cool down mile back to base.

Speeding the last few metres back into home territory, we ended with stretches, cheers, back slapping and clapping , of course we were clapping ourselves, but it still counts!!!

So proud to witness everyones dedication, ability and improvements. It goes to show, with a supportive crew around you, you can surpasses the limitations and impress yourself, beyond belief.

See you next time!!

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

Sprinkling a special dose of Goodgym cheer, 13 radiant runners, pounded pavements, highjacked hills and put to bed PBs on a marvellous Monday night in Brent.

Full squad on deck for the first Monday in November, GG Brent were thrilled to welcome not one, not two but three newbies into the fold. The Super-Spanish addition - Cecilia and Helena and although new to Brent, a fabulous familiar face - Hazel, doing the famous Goodgym borough rounds tour. Additionally awesome was the fact that Hazel had brought along with her some home-baked treats of Brownies and Biccys for afters YAY!!

Joining me (coach Ellie) and our new runners in the ranks were a gorgeous gang of regulars including: Clairey-Bell, Mouse in the House Clare, Tabitha and Rebekah (aka sister sledge), Daring Debs, Lovely Liz, Super-dooper (don't forget the first aid bum-bag) marathon trooper Sadhana and... Man alert Monday: Neil and Enrique YAY.

Confessions before sessions, I had to relay the news that all my efforts to rescue the cancelled tasks had been unsuccessful this week. However, with some quick joined up thinking from Hazel and the crew, we turned our misfortune into a chance to spread the message of Goodgym with a handy leaflet drop, while grabbing the opportunity to stretch our legs and tackle a full on fitness fun and run session in the Wonderful streets of Willesden.

With this in mind, the team bounced into action. Led on in the front by the one and only 'Mouse' we set to work on the 1 mile dash to Queens Park, where the, circumference of the park, perfectly offers a one mile timed challenge op for the troops.

So armed with my timer and cheering lungs of steel, it was 3,2,1 AND THEIR OFF Dashing the fastest their legs could carry them, to set the bench mark.... here's lap one!

Breathless and quite literally steaming, the teams raced in, one by one.... under 7mins, under 8 and under 9s AMAZING Shocked at their own speed, there was no resting on our laurels and after a quick catch of breath off they went again. Incredibly, round 2 brought in consistent times for each athlete, proving there was no fluke and thankfully also..... no puke phew

Even after the epic 2 mile dash, this team of warriors finishing off, only the best way they could......squats of course to the glorious chimes of our Balearic beautys..... This will give us the Culos Perfectos in town* and that is a bunch of PERFECT BOTTOMS to you and me..... HA HAAAAAA

So after such an epic achievement of a session, there was only one way to finish, with Hazel's bountiful bake and stuffing our faces with goodies. Hurrah I suppose it goes to show, we will get the rewards when we Pud-in the work

Until next time x x x x

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

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

After welcoming Hannah, Craig, Dom and Meena for their very first GG runs and lots of cheers for loads of great racing over the weekend (running AND swimming). 35 GoodGymmers ran a total of 7k to help clear paths of weeds, ivy, nettles and general debris at Sunnyside Community Garden.

With headtorches and mobiles lighting the way we snipped, spaded, shovelled, raked, yanked, swept and bagged like crazy for 20 minutes with amazing results.

Then a blast home and back at base Caroline led a stretch we munched on Custard Creams and discussed our favourite running tips. Lovely.

Aidan's leading proceedings next week. At Freightliner's Farm! Have fun,
Simon

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

A grand welcome to first timers Caroline, Caesar and Jason this evening. Double cheers for doing their first good deeds on such a wet evening

So, despite the drizzle, there was good to do in Islington. And as is often the case we spread ourselves across the borough with double deeding.

Caroline "Faster" Townsend led a group of ten over to a brand new task: Single Homeless Project, a charity that supports homeless and vulnerable people in London. Caroline explains what went down:

A really wet one tonight. 10 of us ran to a fantastic new task at the Single Homeless Project . We did an extra lap around Highbury Fields as well so we were proper warmed up when we arrived. At the task we split into groups and did a lot of gardening. We did a nice run back via Clissold Park on the way back. We continued to get wet but we found it refreshing... its been so hot recently. We discussed the debate and a few preferred red grapes and others preferred green.

Caroline

The other crew whizzed up to Caxton House Community Centre. Our job was to sand down some new benches in the front garden for painting. We worked our way down from brush, to coarse sandpaper, to less-coarse sandpaper, to fine sandpaper - being very sure to go with the grain, not against the grain - and left them ready for a nice coat of paint next week (rain, rain, stay away). We also did some weeding in the garden. There definitely isn't a lack of weeds around. To pat ourselves on the back we munched away on one of Steve L's Oreos brought all the way back from Portland. Delicious.

With a good thirty minutes in the bag we sped off via Emirates for a few "slope reps" (they're like hill reps, but they don't sound as hard), before blasting up a couple of real hills and getting back to the pool.

Time to vote. What's the best type of grape: green or red? Red won, which means that Steve C was on the losing debate side once again. Are they rigged? Find out next week

Another great night of doing good and getting fit. Well done all,
Simon

P.S. *Tip o' the GoodGym cap to Richard F for pun report title

P.P.S Don't forget there are drinks on Thursday.

Two tasks on this lovely summer evening in Islington.

One group popped up to Whittington Park. Aidan describes:

We arrived at Whittington Park after our longer run down Holloway Road. Our fortnightly task awaited us with Martin ready with bin bags and gloves.

The majority of us tackled the 1 o'clock club's garden as we need to keep up our good work of maintaining a weed and nettle free garden for the kids who use the club.

There was also the task of de-weeding the entrance of the main building, keeping it looking great for everyone!

After working hard for twenty minutes what better way to treat ourselves than with some circuits. Everyone got a chance to pick an exercise for everyone else to do whilst they went on a short lap of the field. Although some of the ladies did get a bit lost along the way! We had all the classics; press ups, sit-ups, planking and two types of squatting for good measure. All before rejoining Holloway Road for our run back.

Aidan

The other group travelled to Barnsbury Community Centre. We've spent a lot of time over the last year helping create a wonderful garden in the disused space behind the centre and we're now just putting the finishing touches to the project for their grand launch on 25th August.

First job was to get gloves out the storage cabinet. Simple, right? Nope. A combination of stupid rain and then stupid heat meant the combination lock for the cabinet had seized up completely. Despite the best efforts of Caroline, Patrick and a pair of pliers it remained stuck. Not to worry: we'd just have to be extra careful.

We spent 25 minutes carrying old pallets and broken bits of wood round to the estate's waste disposal site, having a thoroughly good weed and watering plants. Nice work.

Following the task we played "Dice of Doom" with Simon's new giant foam dice: everybody had a chance to throw the dice and determine the activity that had to be performed for 15 seconds. There were alternate squat thrusts, running high knees, start jumps (LOTS of start jumps), sprints, dreaded burpees (boo) and the elusive jogging on the spot. We then played a game that Caroline made up. Nobody was quite sure what it was.

Back at the pool we had a free stretch, a biscuit and voted on the proper way to eat scones: jam then cream, cream then jam, or Claire's suggestion, butter, jam then cream (which is apparently the traditional Cornish way of doing things)? Jam then cream won by quite a large margin. Some people were disgusted at this - especially Steve - but the people have spoken.

If anybody wants to make scones for next week maybe we could put it to the test.

xxx,
Simon