23 Happy Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to Haggerston park and shovelled a complete mulch mountain to lay a massive woodchip path to keep the park protected and used through the winter.

Thanks to everyone for coming along this evening!! Big shout out to The GOodGym first timers!!! Hope you had a top first session and will be back next week for more!!

A bit of a round about loop stretching out the group a bit on the 2.5k route to Haggerston Park to meet Park Ranger Bruce from Hackney Parks.

While the tools were getting set up we increased the body warmth with some scorching floodlit Sprints!! Powering up the 80 metre stretch then jogging back made sure we were fully physically prepared for the task ahead!!

Arming ourselves with gloves, snow shovels and 6 wheelbarrows we headed into the darkness to get started!!

A 3 tonnes pile of mulch lay ahead and we set up a spectacular mulch moving system to get the job done!! We had barrow runners keeping the wheels moving at a great pace, Shovellers loading the barrows, single Scoopers loading a snow shovel high then taking it directly to the newly forming pathway. Then we had the path curators and Chi playing traffic cop keeping a good distance and route of all the toings abd frowings.

We had a great pace going and the pile was going down while the path was getting thicker and longer!!

Smashing out a furious last 10 minutes of action to complete the task and leave no piece of woodchip behind we were done in style!!

Running back at a bouncy pace had us hope dead on time!! Stretched out and heading home with a top task complete!!

See you next week for a visit to Wilton Estate community Garden!!

Next Social after the Group Run on the 11th of February to get Pizza

Enjoy

Joel

Thanks to Chi and Liz for all the non blurry pictures!!

26 intrepid and festive GoodGymers fought through the wind and ran to come along on what is Camden's last group run... of the decade!

Shoutout to Steve for the excellent punnage this week.

We welcomed another soul to the herd - hello Linsey! Hope to see you back with us in the new year. We also had a tourist visitor, John, usually of Birmingham but who had been down doing the Run Leader Training in Somerset House and thought he might come along for a cheeky run! Camden's always open to tourists if you fancy it!

Here is where I'd usually plug the next run, but there isn't one until January now, so please don't turn up to the Living Centre next week because we don't have a run planned!

After a very quick intro as time was against us, we ran straight on to the American International Church to make the beds.

11 men's beds and 3 women's beds were made up and Jonathan (the minister from the Church) told us that the original 12 people who had used the shelter when it opened early last month have since gone on to more stable housing and no longer need the help of the church. What a way to end our December runs with that lovely news.

But that wasn't all that Jonathan had in store for us; there was a carol concert put on by a choir and orchestra going on upstairs so after the beds were made, we hared upstairs to catch the end of Ding Dong Merrily on High! It turned out to be more of a performance than a singalong, but there was a bit of Bach, some brilliant Spanish choir singing and very, very lovely orchestral pieces for us to soak up before going back out into the rain for the slightly damp run home.

It was soon time for us to head back to the Crick and luckily the rain had slowed to the occasional spatter and we wound through the back streets before our stretches and cool down. The pub was absolutely heaving but good numbers in attendance as always- thanks again Abi for being our pub leader and booker, it's always appreciated!

Thanks a lot for coming and getting involved with GoodGym this year, for telling your friends about us and for keeping on and coming back week after week. I might be biased, but I'm pretty sure that Camden is the best of all the GoodGyms and it's all you folks that make it as wonderful as it is.

Hope you all have a happy and rested Christmas break, whatever you're doing. See you in 2020, recharged and ready to go (hopefully)!

2020 and on

NEW YEARS DAY: As New Years Day falls on a Wednesday, Jonathan and the church will be welcoming folks to the homeless shelter and we'll be running a smaller team up there to make the beds again. If you'd like to join, click anywhere in this sentence - we'll meet at the American International Church around 6:45 to make the beds in time for the 7:30 doors opening. It'd be lovely to have you with us and what better way to ring in the New Year?

FIRST OFFICIAL RUN BACK: While some of us will be running back to the homeless shelter on the 1st January, our first group run will be on Wednesday 8th January. We'll be splitting the group again with one half going back to C4WS and the other half doing the Annual Christmas Tree Sprint! More information and signup link is right here.

Aaaaaand breathe.

Merry Christmas!

Ben

21 Group runners and 23 social superstars rounded off Hackney’s 51st and final Group Run of the year! While Toyin hit 💯

GoodGym first timer Millie know how to pick a top session for her first!! Hope you enjoyed the night as much as me!

Going down as one of the best Group runs in GG history!! We have a milestone, great group, dressing up, physical task that we completed in nick of time, 23 person social, glorious Pizza and out of this world cake!!!

Congratulations to Toyin for joining the 💯 club and the new fresh milestone T-Shirt will be winging its way to you very soon!! Amazing dedication, hard work, positivity, smiles and cakes has literally been the Hackney’s Fuel this year in particular!! Thank you x

Off to the task on a little loop after a delayed start. Arriving at Wilton with a big job to complete we split into 2 groups and got to work like elves in the night!

Weeding, trimming, potato harvesting to the Max!! Filling up tonne bag after bag to release the garden to get to Spring glory! The mulch madness got under way at a steady controlled pace before we got gathered extra energy, power with multiple backs (apparently) this back switching super power gave the barrow runners the fuel to run and tip at an all time rate so the raking crew could do their spreading thing and somehow re mulching the whole garden in the nick of time!!

All bags dragged away and tools tidied the smell of Christmas Pizza was calling strong so we dashed back to base grabbed our bags and picked up some reinforcements for our Christmas Party!!

With numbers at an all time social high amazing to have you all along for a lot of Pizza and cake fun!! Cake was eaten well into the night and the only discontent was the argument of which of the most amazing homemade cakes was the favourite! The quadruple chocolate Profiteer roles won for me!! Unbelievable!!

Thank you all and everyone who has run with Hackney for a magical year of GG fun and games!! Have an amazing Christmas and New Year, look forward to hearing all about it on the 7th of January!!

Merry Christmas

Joel x

p.s thanks to Chi, Patrick and Liz for the pictures. well most of them 🤣