TEN wonderful Waltham Forest runners joined me to run 3km and do an amazing job helping Greenleaf Road Baptist Church!

With Ant away it was time for me to vist the wonderful Waltham Forest group. We had a great task, a brilliant group of people and a nice spring evening - a recipe for a great time!

First of all we gathered together for the intro welcoming Sarah on her first GG run, congratulating Ruby on running Brighton Marathon (so much kudos for being back at GG already) and gave advance congrats to Ruari who'll be completing his 100th parkrun this weekend. With a quick warmup dispatched it was Pippa in charge and she led us on the very short run to the church.

90 seconds!

Really really short run, my watch made it exactly 90 seconds! Arriving at the church we eventually found Jenny and then made our way in. The task at hand was stripping the walls in what used to be the creche. the space is going to used for a youth club before much of the building is going to be renovated (but not for a couple of years!).

We split everyone around the room and split jobs around taking boards off the walls, scraping the resulting glue off the walls, wiping down the walls and then some painting.

Armed with every conceivable piece of cutlery (cake slices, spatulas, fish slices...) and a few paint scrapers everyone went at it with varying degrees of success on wall s craping and the others worked hard to get paint on to the walls (a bit of a gloss vs matt issue). In 40 mins we made a massive difference and the room was looking great. We'll be back in a couple of weeks to do some more work.

~Kitchen Utensils

Jenny kindly set out some drinks and biscuits (jaffa cakes - cue the debate) and once we were refreshed we said our goodbyes and headed off to Lloyd Park! There we did a shuttle run exercise throwing some set of exercises too to make sure that everyone had got their blood pumping! with the light starting to fade and our breath back Pippa led us back to base where we stretched and then some of us headed for a drink.

Fantastic night, thanks for looking after me and great to see you all again.

Cheers, Pritesh

One of the features that makes London such a great city are its fabulous parks. Vicky, Regents, Greenwich, Hyde and co. are magnificent places to chill out, run, walk, picnic and people watch. However, none of them quite match the rambling wildness of Walthamstow Marshes in the Lower Lee Valley, where the intrepid GoodGym Waltham Forest crew set out for on tonight's mission.

The 3.5k run to task built the anticipation as the urban cityscape gives way to surroundings that you would usually see in the countryside, arriving at our destination, grabbing gloves, bags and litter pickers while the horses of the Lee Valley riding school looked on with inscrutable expressions.

As usual, this professional hit squad of task completing professionals made a flying start and began filling their bags with the unsightly litter that was blotting the landscape. A special welcome to new recruit Niamh and thanks to recruiting Sargent Jade for finding such a capable addition to our group.

With our work completed it was time to head back to base and we decided to split the group with one group taking the even more scenic 4k route via the Wetlands but we all eventually made it back to Mirth, Marvel and Maud for some stretching and refreshments.

Excellent work today everyone, you can sleep in the knowledge that Waltham Forest and the world in general is a better place, thanks to you.

I misinformed you all about next week's tasks when I said we were heading to Chingford Memorial Park. That beauty will be on 4th of July, but next week we will be heading to everyone's favourite community cafe The Mill for some gardening, cleaning and painting sign-up here

Peace, Ant ☮️

Superman II, The Bourne Supremacy, Spider-Man 2, Hostel: Part II, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Before Midnight, The Dark Knight, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

According to THE INTERNET, these are just a few examples of sequels that were better than the originals. Now, I wouldn’t make such a grand claim about last night’s WFGG run to George Mason Lodge (GML), but it was at least as good as it’s predecessor.

The excitement started early when Ama spotted the bewildered Run Trainer (yours truly!) scratching my head outside of the destination as I somewhat haplessly tried to suss out a quieter route from our Mirth, Marvel and Maud (MM&M) base to the destination. Luckily the resourceful Ama had drawn a map and we headed to the base along the relatively quiet and pollution free residential streets of Walthamstow.

Safely arriving at MM&M for the start of the session, it was great to see our eleven strong crew and to welcome new GoodGymers Kerri and Katie. It was easy to spot anyone who hadn’t come along last week as they were not wearing long trousers! Sorry guys, my bad; next time I will mention the nettles!

After the pretask briefing and kudos to the weekend half and full marathon exploits of Pippa, Raymond, Francis and Ercole we hit the tarmac with someone or other leading the way and arrived 2-miles and 18-minutes later at GML.

Our now battle-hardened gardeners started pulling up weeds faster than a toupee in a hurricane under the watchful eye of Mohammed, a charismatic and multi-lingual GML resident who had written over 100 books.

40 minutes later with the GML garden looking resplendent and the nod of approval from Mohammed we headed back to base for a cool-down stretch and a general feeling of warmth and happiness.

Be you a regular, new, lapsed or a few, please join us next Wednesday for another fantastic task when will be painting part of The Mill.

Woohoo, Waltham Forest GoodGym is up and running. We had a fabulous turnout for the launch as we welcomed 35 beautiful people to the plush art deco surroundings of Mirth, Marvel, and Maud. With such burgeoning support, we decided to split the group and accomplish not one but two tasks both of which helped to make Walthamstow a slightly better place by the time we returned to base.

GoodGym team one headed to The Limes a fantastic activity and community centre for children and young people. Taking a direct 1 km route to this quaint original William Morris building sleeves were rolled, trays were filled, and fifteen fantastic females grabbed rollers and set to painting a large room from top to bottom.

Meanwhile, the rest of The Limes Crew cleaned the children's play area including the ball pit and sensory area.

After packing away, we regrouped and took the scenic (3.5 km) route home. There was some pretty impressive running on the show, particularly the way everyone conquered the hill at the end of the run.

GoodGym team two headed out with Ed, and ran an impressive 6.5 km to spruce up the area around Lea Valley Riding Centre. A designated site of special scientific interest and home to rare plants, grass snakes and toads the area has a less welcome visitor - litter. Armed with some serious litter picking tools we got to work filling over ten bags full of trash. Horses looked on as we worked and in the cool evening, it was a surprisingly therapeutic experience!

40 minutes later we were cruising back. It wouldn't be GoodGym without a bit of a workout so naturally, we had to stop for some jumping jacks, squat jumps and Lunges. Easy peasy for this lot.

A final sprint up the High Road saw some sweaty faces safely back, and the two teams mingled back to one to enjoy a well-deserved drink.