A keen group of Goodgymmers from all over the London boroughs (strong showing from Harringay, Lambeth and Wandsworth!) ran either 10km, 16km or 26km routes around the Docklands area of East London.

Our 10km and 26km runners met up at ** Peyton & Bryne coffee shop** just down the road from the Cutty Sark (and the GG Greenwich start point), prepared for a long run on a particularly hot day. After espressos and last minute water bottle top ups, we left South London and crossed under the Greenwich Foot Tunnel to Island Gardens and Millwall Park (a key training location in running coach and Goodgymmer Ben Parkes youtube channel), and connected to beautiful Millwall Basin, part of the Isle of Dogs. After looping around the water, we jogged over to Mudchute Farm, a popular GG Greenwich task, and said "Hello" to alpacas, donkeys and goats.

Along Manchester Road, we caught our first sight of the O2 arena in North Greenwich, a location that we would be seeing a lot during our run alongside the Thames. East India Basin featured a plinth holding one of the Millenium Beacons, one of 1,000 torches built by British Gas in 1999 and lit on the turn of the Millennium. The Bow Ecology Park was our next spot, passing through Canning Town Tube Station and ending our first leg at The Crystal by Victoria Dock- classified as one of the world's greenest buildings, and a permanent exhibition of sustainability. It is also the start point for Victoria Dock parkrun.

We said "Goodbye" to our 10km runners at this point, and "Hello" to our 16km runners, using the Crystal as their starting location. We enjoyed the floral scents from the well maintained gardens in Thames Barrier Park (and picked up Patrick Luong on the way) and followed Factory Road through the former industrial riverside London (past the Tate & Lyle Sugar Refinery) and over to the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. The Woolwich Foot Tunnel is almost identical to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel- I have run a plenty good training run connecting the two tunnels in the past (see here for the route!). Stopped for water fill-ups in Royal Victoria Gardens, and a 100m sprint around London's tiniest running track!

The final sections of our tour follow sections 1 and 14 of the Capital Ring Walk, running under the flight path of planes taking off from London City Airport and past the UEL Sports Dock, and into Beckton District Park, appreciating the cover from surrounding trees during the hottest part of the day. Second parkrun course spotted on route, as we past the starting point for Beckton parkrun, a lovely community parkrun that never gets too busy- worth a visit! Last straight connected us all onto The Greenway, a direct link through East London to Stratford Olympic Park, passing West Ham Stadium, the View Tube and finishing our day of running at the Timber Lodge Cafe for refreshments and food.

Really impressive running, especially on such a hot day. It was really lovely to meet so many friendly Goodgym folks, and to be able show you around my local area!

GG Lambeth Trainer Mark Gilyead will be leading next months long run through South London:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/goodgym-monthly-long-run-saaaf-landan

Cranbrook community centre is a lovely space, offering a hall for community-based events and private hire and also a food garden. This weekend, they were participating in both Open Garden squares weekend and the Big Lunch, and were looking for some help to tidy up their garden in advance of this.

And so seven GoodGymmers met up this afternoon to help Cranbrook community centre clear up their garden.

As nominally in charge, Liz took the details of the first task from our contact, Janet. In essence, this was to throw away some fence panels (without being as gung-ho about it as the wind wanted us to be) and to bundle some sticks together. This did not take long to do, and we soon looking askance at Janet for more to do (probably in much the same way that a dog looks at you when you're eating a bacon sandwich. Or cheese).

Thankfully, Janet's need for clean wasn't yet satiated. For task number two, we moved onto an immediately adjacent area (comprising more sticks, but, also, some pots!) with instructions to bring order to the universe. This is when everyone started to come into their own, making useful suggestions about the best way to go about it in a constructive and collaborative way that allowed Liz to simply take photos and give a health and safety briefing ("Please don't get hurt: I have no qualifications to help if you do").

This sort of Kings (or Queens?) was mucho fun and we learned lots! For example, we learnt to avoid water (both standing water from pots to be discarded and hose water from, well, a hose), how to tie sticks together (show them some affection by hugging them), and which GoodGymmers to avoid if you've been irreversibly transformed into a snail (most of them, tbh).

Part way through the big sort, Assiya and Jess were siphoned off to put up posters/deliver leaflets, while the rest of the group finished up sorting.

Tasks completed within a super speedy 45/50 minutes, and separate photos of Team Clean and Team Leaflet taken by Janet, we made our goodbyes and took some Oreos for the road (Jess was also gifted some lovely rhubarb from the food garden, which she plans to be traditional with by seasoning with custard).

Lovely meeting you all and hopefully you can join in Cranbrook Community centre's Big Lunch tomorrow! 😄

A large crew headed to this much-loved local arts centre this evening for painting and Pilates.

A cool sized crew

Yes, we were a team of 34 this evening, with a real flurry of new runners, which we were delighted about. Gathering on our hotel steps for our briefing of this evening’s activity, we were in high spirits as, not only were we heading to one of our favourite tasks, the sun was still shining and the skies a beautiful blue. What. A.Treat.

TSB (Taping, Scrubbing and Brushing)

After making our way through some of East London’s busiest streets, we arrived at Oxford House where task owner Sarah was ready and waiting with kit and task perfectly planned and prepped as usual. After the speediest of briefings, three teams were despatched to all floors of the building: two teams were split over two floors to pain large wall spaces in the corridors, while a third team was dispatched to the dance studio corridor to finish the high spec scrubbing runners had started last time we were there.

Runners worked tirelessly at top speed, sealing off woodwork with masking tape before rolling and brushing thoroughly over these large surfaces. It was a speedy effort, working in a tough temperature, in a confined space in all three areas - GoodGymers, you did good.

The work was so efficient, ahead of time runners came forward to volunteer to start the clean-up effort, and so the pace continued as any spillage was dealt with swiftly by enthusiastic sugar soap-ers and mopper-uppers.

Posture, pelvic floor – and a proud trainer

And then it was a little after 8, and we all gathered in the theatre for this evening’s Pilates. I must, at this point, thank Sarah and Oxford House for giving us such generous use of this space every time we visit. It is a real treat to be able to offer our runners an indoor venue for our fitness - we really love it and appreciate it, so thank you.

So back to the fitness session - after a little Pilates theory, we proceeded to practise our abdominal vacuums, posture and pelvic floor basics, and a little stretching.

Runners took the tougher moves such as the time-honoured Double Leg Stretch in their stride and gave it their all, before finishing with some lower back mobility work and that lying pretzel glute stretch.

Job. Done.

And then we cheerfully (and maybe somewhat wearily), made our way out to the front of the building to get our first daylight end-of-task pic in eight months.

Another treat! What an evening!

Monday mentions

A massive GG welcome to our first time runners, Beth, Tom, Lorhaine, Victor, Mate, Anna, Eugenie, Lily and Michael! 8 new runners! Thank you so, so much for your incredible contributions to this evening's run. And I hope you join us again very soon.

A massive thanks to Katherine and Liz for back-marking; Katherine for some great pics, while possibly the biggest thanks of the night goes to Tim and Michael who stayed behind at workout time to clean up the painting equipment, missing our Pilates session. You're heroes. Thank you for going that extra mile.

Okay, well that's nearly it from me this week, other than to highlight what is...

On this week’s running radar…

• The GoodGym London Monthly Long Run is happening this Saturday, 18th May, offering distances of 19K and 10K, with runners running at different paces, and no one ever getting left behind. It’s a picturesque, multi-park route, with a food finale at POP Brixton, so definitely one to check out here.

• …While on Sunday, here in Tower Hamlets we’re manning the bag-drop at the Hackney Half, in exchange for your free placeat either: the Asics London 10K, or the Oxford Half, or next year’s Hackney Half. There’s still time to sign up for this Sunday 19th May - details are here.

Right, that really is it for this week. Have a wonderful week, everyone, and hope to see you really soon.

Bank Holiday new faces!

We gathered for this evening’s run welcoming a flurry of new runners. What a treat!

14 of us then headed around the corner, half a mile away on leafy Sewardstone Road to meet Catherine, our task owner and Parkview Estate power house, leading the initiative to get the estate greener and full of food.

Two trees - and plants for the bees!

Runners were quickly despatched to all areas of the estate: Team Tree headed out to the front gardens, onto Old Ford Road with barrows full of compost to plant new apple trees in some stubborn soil.

The rest of the runners quickly filled buckets with compost and plants, grabbed a watering can and made their way to the estate's Sydney House to see if residents wanted balcony planters filling with geraniums and other small plants that bees love! Plenty of residents took us up on our offer to tend to their planters, with one resident even opting for the new Resident Association plants over what she currently had in her planter! The runners worked tirelessly, both on their seedling sales pitch, and on ferrying new compost back and forth from the garden to the balonies.

Meanwhile, the apple tree crew had their work cut out. Digging deep in that soil was no mean feat. And even with some useful tools at their disposal, the runners still broke a sweat on what was a chilly Monday evening. But they did it. GoodGymers don’t give up. Never mind not giving up easily, they don’t give up full stop. And so with the apple trees in, they set about replacing the grass, watering, and planting water tubes. Job done.

Going full pelt in the park

And so with minutes to spare, we raced ‘round the corner to neighbouring Victoria Park and played two rounds of the greyhound-and-hare game, with every runner speeding across the grass going full pelt. Impressive. And then they were met by me, and the burp-free burpee to a soundtrack of the Backstreet Boys. Monday motivation or WHAT.

Then we stretched, and made our way back to the hotel, animated and over the moon at what we’d helped to achieve.

Big shout out’s

A big warm welcome to our new runners Hester, Alice, Annie and, absolutely not new to GG but new to TH, Hannah. Thank you all for so much hard work and laughter on your first run.

Thanks to David for fabulous backmarking, Charlotte and Sarah for some wicked pics, and to Hannah for this week’s wonderful pun.

And a really huge shout out this week to our very own Hass, who recently hit 300 good deeds, and who has been a consistently active member of GG Tower Hamlets since January 2014.

Coming up...

Okay, we’ve got some biggies coming up…

• This Thursday it’s the GoodGym Social, hosted by our splendid Southwark crew. Details can be found here.

• And don’t forget, you can still bag a free place at the Asics London 10K, or the Oxford Half, or next year’s Hackney Half, by joining us on Sunday 19th May for volunteering at this year’s Hackney Half. Details and sign up are here.

Right, that’s it. Have a wonderful week, and hope to see you soon!