Twenty tree-mendous GoodGymmers ran 7k to recycle Christmas trees in Barnet.

Meeting at the Phoenix, we were joined by Carol and Rachel for their first ever good deeds - welcome! Lauren and Mumtaz joined us for their second, while Simon joined our group as a tourist from Tower Hamlets. Brilliant to see you all.

Recycling Christmas trees is a regular January task for us so we were familiar with the route up to the recycling centre on summers lane. Once there we divided into five groups with Avital, jenny, Graham, Jody and Shaun kindly leading their groups off into the night in search of trees.

After twenty five minutes searching I was a bit worried all the trees might already have been collected, but as the runners approached our meeting point I could see we didn't have a problem: loads of trees! Each group did brilliantly, but the winners were Avital's group who brought back a brilliant five trees between the three of them. Kudos all round and a well earned first pick of biscuit this week.

Hauling trees around is hard work - in between a 6k run too - but the team did a bit of extra exercise to keep warm: some fast steps on the curb then some calf raises.

Trees dropped off we set off back to the Phoenix for stretches, congratulations and biscuits. The group collected fourteen trees in total making that a GG Barnet record!

This week's Barnet Biscuit was: dark chocolate hob nobs

Great work everyone - looking forward to next week already.

D

12 terrific GoodGymmers met at Long Lane Pasture for our first group run of the year and our starter session for GGB.

We were joined by Lauren for her first Barnet run and GG tourists Abi, Liz, John and Sally. Welcome!! Long Lane Pasture is a brilliant open space entirely maintained by volunteers so it was great to lend a hand on this cold Saturday.

After a quick run to warm up we grabbed rakes and set to work clearing brambles and creating big piles along with clearing leaves from the pathways. Everyone got stuck in and we made quick progress. At 11am we stopped for a break and were kindly offered hot coffee, biscuits and crisps which very much hit the spot. From there we got back to work finishing all the parts we were working on before tidying and saying our goodbyes.

We weren't quite done though: we used the hill outside the open space to run some quick running drills focusing on knee drives and arm movement. Some good work all around so we set off to Greggs for vegan sausage rolls!

Lovely to see you all, thank you for coming, and I hope to see you on Tuesday the 8th for our first regular evening group run of 2019.

This week's Barnet Biscuit: there was an impressive selection but happily mine was a Party Ring...

Over to MJ: