14 amazing runners braved the threat of imminent rain during a balmy 5.5k run to help the lovely folk at Chapman's Green

Tonight, the wonderful runners from Haringey GoodGym welcomed their new trainer and, in what seem as the fashion, they were lovely and made him feel right at home. Result!

Big shout out to Mike who visited us for his second run and got stuck right in; to Rob from Barnet GoodGym for stopping by (hand in that transfer request, son - we'd like to see again soon); and to regular runner Latoya who completed a wonderful 10k run at the weekend despite having spent a whole week surviving on rations for charity. Hero!

A North London quick-sand

Tonight we headed towards Chapman's Green, running through a very peaceful Lordship Rec and a not so peaceful Lordship Lane. You win some, you lose some. All in all, it was around 2.8k. We were welcome by task owner Rob from Friends of Chapman Green, who set us to work on sanding the benches on the bowling green in the grounds.

Our keen runners did a fantastic job and managed to leave around half the benches on the green sanded. We can't wait to come back and finish the job if Rob and the Friends of Chapman's Green will have us back.

We then grabbed the mandatory Insta-worthy selfies and set off back for base camp.

By the time we were stretching outside Tottenham Green Pools, we had run a cool 5.5k.

No rest for the GoodGymmers

Next week we'll be visiting the lovely folk at Somerford Grove Community Project, who do a great job, and need some help with some weeding and some wood stacking. Come play with us!!!

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I go out when I want except on Wednesdays when I go running to pull weeds and plant bulbs (Pondlife)

This week we had 16 GoodGym-ers show up to help on our longest run in AGES! I don't know if that means everybody loves a long run or just that everybody wanted to help make sure we got enough done in our shorter task time.

Either way, you're all wonderful!

We were joined by GG newbiew Dominic, who hadn't run for years but was still super speedy.

Seeing as the run was real long, we split into two teams: the speedy lot and the party pacers, with Julie leading the party group and me leader the others.

Thanks to my medium sense of direction and Niamh helping out with her own medium sense of direction, we did an extra half a kilometer or so (including the biggest hill) and arrived at the same time as the other group anyway. Luckily on the way home Rhiannon directed us a way that didn't mean we had to go back up the massive hill we came down to get to the park entrance!

At the task we were greeted by three volunteers, already hard at work. Our task was to pull out all the weeds and take them to the compost round the side. We only had 15 minutes, but with 16 pairs of hands, we still blitzed it. The Friends of Stationers Park will be planting some new bulbs and bringing the pond back to life.

The volunteers told us it would have taken them a couple of weeks to get as much done on their own.

Everybody did so good!

Next week will be my last ever run, so I hope you can make it!

12 fantastic runners joined me in Haringey to run over 5km to help out Lorenco House with some serious garden work

I would like to say that I welcomed everyone, ran through the wonderful ways that you can do with GG, talked about the task and went through the health and safety run down and even covered the news…however, with a huge 10 minutes spent at traffic lights on the cycle up to Haringey I arrived at a bout 18:59. Huge thanks to Nurjehan who signed everyone in and did all of the above for me. TaskForce to the rescue! Incidentally, big big GG welcome to Kemmi and Mike who were here for the first time! Hurrah!

Stationery time

Once I did finally arrive we got everyone moving, did a quick intro and Sarah took the party pace group off! The rave pace group (we might need to work on these names) did a few more warm-up exercises and then I let Dave lead the way – how nice I am!

Rave pace arrived just a minute or so before the party pace team and we were all welcomed by Gerald at Lorenco house. He explained that this was an assisted living residence for older people with learning difficulties. After a quick tour (hello £10,000 fish tank!) we were shown the task at hand! We had a massive planter to line and fill with soil, as well as some planting and solar lamp placement.

Blooming L

We split into three teams – the Lining team, the Lifting team and the Lights team! Everyone took to their jobs with aplomb and before we knew it we showed Gerald and his team what GG are all about. Kemmi, it turns out, was an expert leader and carefully guided, Mike, Ella, Nurjehan to a superb job lining the planter. Dave, Latoya, Veronika and Alex wasted no time shifting 50 heavy bags of soil with great speed – impressive! Rhiannon, Sarah, Julie and Freya expertly placed out the lights whilst working with the resident cat and showed some impressive agility jumping a not so small fence!

With five minutes to go and the final tacks in place to line the planter we told Gerald we were going to go all hands on deck to fill the planter full with soil. He had his doubts but GG Haringey are not ones to mess about and with incredulous speed and co-ordinated teamwork the planter was full to the brim! Wonderful work everyone!

Super Haringey

With a group photo done we split into our respective groups, waved our goodbyes and promised to come back for more jobs and before we knew it we were back at the pool, doing our stretched and going home tired but satisfied at another smashing session!

Pennie is back next week – get signed up for her penultimate session as GG Haringey leader!

Thanks as ever for having me and hope to see you all soon!

Cheers
Pritesh