For one last time as a Goodgym Area Activator, Simon met at the Arsenal Community Hub on Benwell Road to meet a huge group of keen runners, ready to help at Caledonian Park this evening. It was truly a joy to see familiar faces from years gone by (including awesome folks who attended Simon's first session 6.5 years ago at Mildmay Community Centre - I'll find the link!). Also thank you to Astra for attending your first Goodgym session- I heartly recommend attending more sessions soon- we have wonderful people in this community!

After a short (but necessary) warm up, we ran together up McKenzie Road and the Market Road slopes to the wonderful Caledonian Park Clocktower, to meet up with Miriam and Gail, our local task coordinators.

Our objective for the night (with our 26 volunteers on hand!!!), was to shovel piles of crushed rock fines into wheelbarrows, and then transport the loads over to the forest pathways on the West side of the park. This is a lovely wooded walk, that is often frequented by children, families and wheelchair users, and we want to keep this area as accessible as possible during the Springtime months.

Over the January Challenge, Area Activator Simon has been hosting weekly early morning run sessions in local parks (Islington and Tower Hamlets based) with Track and Towpath Run Club.

These workouts were developed to build our runners towards the Runthrough Victoria Park 10km on 1st February- great for building fitness over the difficult Winter months. We completed timed intervals around Emirates Stadium, hill reps in Finsbury Park, speedy laps of Bartlett Park, Poplar and tempo effort loops of Meath Gardens, Mile End. Always followed by hot drinks, snacks and socials (and before we need to head to work!).

To find out more, feel free to tale a look at our Strava group for future fortnightly sessions:

https://strava.app.link/G9QbhbBqp0b

On the day, we were lucky to be treated to really excellent running weather (mild, not windy, a pinch of rain here and there- pretty good for February!). The Runthrough Victoria Park race series hosts a half marathon, 10km and 5km on the same course, but at different start times, so we were able to cheer on fellow racers in the half marathon before we kicked off at 10am sharp.

Congratulations to Kim and Laura for clocking personal bests today!

And to Lucinda and John for achieving their season's best times too!

Keep your eyes peeled for more Track and Towpath race meet ups soon.