13 Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to help save everything useable from the soon to be closing Cordwainers Grow garden.

An evening in the daylight but punctuated with wind, rain, sunshine and of course hailstones!!

A crazy close task allowed two of or runners to walk to the task even bringing along George the dog to sing us doggie rap while we shifted stuff!

A sad evening for everyone involved in Cordwainers Grow garden as the land it is on is being sold on to be developed! After many years of amazing gardening and creating a community of amazing people who enjoyed a bit of gardening pretty much everything had to go!

So we rolled tyres, carried benches, log seats, plants, worm boxes, Wood, bee shelves, bagged compost, bricks and even a mower to create an Aladdin’s cave of useful community garden that was free to the first person who saw it along Mare street.

35 minutes and everything that was not a shed was removed and we were done! A rewarding up run looping along the canal to round us up to 5 strong K of running finished off the evening!!

See you next week for our visit to Abney!

#GoodGymHackney

Joel

An Evening of celebrations!! A triple GoodDeed milestone run combined with Earth Hour, Hackney Parks, digging, Stag Beetle loggers, 4K Run, Fitness session, social and ohh yes CAKE!!

Massive thank you to everyone who came out last night both to the group run and social!!

Huge shout out to Clair and Anne for notching up a magnificent 100 GoodDeeds each!! Amazing dedication, hard work and happy times!

To the cake makers thank you!! Cake fest 2019 was incredible!! ** Eva, Toyin, Emily and Mireille** you are all stars!!

Awesome to have so many people come along to the social! Hope you enjoyed it as much as me. Looking forward to our next milestone/ race celebration so we can do it all over again!

So the task, running out to Well Street Common in fingers crossed our last dark task for a while we met Bruce and the Hackney Parks crew. We first carried all the 30 logs over to the Stag Beetle hotel development area. Splitting into 2 (non competitive-ish) teams we got digging!

Having to get down to half the depth of the longest log this was no mean feat. Dario had everyone in awe as his silky digging skills came to the for and got team 1 down to the right depth in quick time. Some fine tuning with some excellent clumpage removing squared off the whole before the logs went in. I finely honed cluster of logs half buried in the ground was half art instillation and part rooting wood for the ** Stag Beetles** to feed and make a home.

With the other team catching up fast the soil went back in to complete the renovation and we were done!

With a little time we brought the fire and smashed out a running/body weight conditioning circuit to get us primed for the social ahead!

A quick run back and we were refuelling to the max!!

Great to have you along! Hope you can all make next week when we help ** Cordwainers Grow** saving a plants and trees from a community garden than is being forced to close.

Enjoy

Joel

12 Hackney GoodGymers ran 4.5k to help Hollybush Community Garden.

Thanks for looking after me this evening!!

Social next week after group run to celebrate Toyin’s 50th GoodDeed!! going to a Thai restaurant on Mare street post Group Run be great if you could make it along!

Running down to Hollybush Community Garden this evening to see the amazing Margaret and Michael a 2k run down to the Rocky garden started us off.

So much Moss to shift so make the garden safe for the older residents as it makes the ground very slippery. A wide range of tools and scraping techniques all making that beautiful scraping sound on concrete!

Scraping to the beat we also had out flower pot sorters going through 250 potted plants deciding weather they were able to be planted or had to hit the compost heap.

Powering through the moss and the plants we also swept up and tidied up the garden helping to create a huge bag of garden waste which we were able to lift and carry to the bins for the council to come and collect.

Rewarded in the best way possible with so treats gave us the power up to do the longer route back to base and a nice pace!

Big shout out to Sam on his last run with us before he moves West. Thank you for your huge efforts with the Hackney crew!! Hope you get along to a West London GG group soon.

See you next week for a trip to Hackney Parks before out social!

Smooth Running

Joel

13 Hackney GoodGymers ran 6k to Abney Park Cemetery to shovel, barrow and spread 2 tonnes for fresh mulch.

Zipping away from the Bakehouse with a Spring in our many steps we headed North to Hackney’s Magnificent 7 Cemetery Abney Park. One of the 7 protected and historically significant cemeteries in London our help is a massive boost to keeping the enchanting green space in top nick and useable in the Winter months.

We do this by spreading mulch across the many dirt paths in the Cemetery to keep the mud at bay while also protecting the vegetation and wildlife that live on the path verges from people walking on them.

Straight into action with shovels, barrows, rakes and spot lights we delved deep into the darkness and got working! Slick action lines of filling the wheelbarrows, running them out and tipping the mulch out then raking it into place.

40 minutes in and 2 tones of mulch shifted a top effort produced by all!!

A swift exit and a pacey 3k run back to base finished off a top GG evening!!

Thanks to Justin for the spooky chapel picture!

See you all next week for a trip to the amazing Hollybush community Garden!!

Smooth Running

Joel

12 Tough Hackney GoodGymers ran 6k to help clear a large flower bed on the Wilton Estate.

Way sub zero and icy rain met us for our endeavours this week!! A top 10 toughest conditions for a GG run I have seen!

Thank you all so much for coming out and smashing the task!!

Getting in a longer loop out to Wilton Estate to try to warmup our core temperatures and mobilise our muscles. We met Ulus the new lead for the Community garden, grabbed the plentiful tools and set to work!

We had 200 logs to shift first up so making a lifting chain we loaded up barrow after barrow full on logs and shifted them to a newly created wood store. Some small logs and some huge logs requiring big team work to make it happen.

With the logs shifting the rest of the group forked, dug, pulled and pic axed their way to glory! The roots may have been a match for the fork but our sheer will prevailed and a huge proportion of the flower bed was cleared!!

Soaked and worked out we took a even longer loop back to base to pump up the mileage!

Thanks for coming along, amazing effort!!

Smooth Running

Joel

16 Hackney GoodGymers ran 4.5k to help St Luke’s Church continue their epic refurb by clearing 25 bags of leaves and delivering 250 leaflets.

Great to have you all along this evening!! Perfect GoodGyming weather on show for us to add a little extra shine on the evening.

With a uneven run planned with such a close task we headed to a former Hackney favourite in the Town Hall offices which provided an amazing exercise playground to get us moving!! Leg swings, Balance drills, playground skipping and a strength blast got the blood pumping very nicely!!

As reward a short 1k run to the task followed where we met Norman and John from St Luke’s. With a mountain of leaves the main task was self explanatory so most of the squad dived in and got bagging!! Stuffing the bags to the brim and tying them up and a great rate we managed to cram 25 bags full of leaves, few nettles and the odd bottle. The garden was looking great all clear in preparation for a group of volunteers to come along on Thursday to plant a range of winter wild flowers to brighten up the Church garden!!

The special delivery unit ran around the houses literally climbing a huge number of stairs to deliver 250 leaflets for an upcoming event in the Church. The 8 story tower block was no match for these energetic GoodGymers!

With all the task complete we had a sneaky peak at the amazing refurbished Church which was completed over the summer!

With a Spring in our step we ran the longer way back to base with 3k loop bringing up back in perfect time!!

Hope to see you next week for our session in Abney/Clissold Park!!

Smooth Running

Joel

17 of Hackney’s finest GoodGymers ran 5k to Hackney Downs to Edge, Mulch and sweep to victory.

With the sun setting on London Town the Hackney crew met up with energy and enthusiasm.

Darting the 2k over to Hackney Downs to meet Park Ranger Bruce who had our tasks ready and waiting.

The main task of the evening to to give the pathways around the adventure playground a tidy up by recutting the edging of the path like a nice hair cut.

With the majority of the group cutting in and edging off the path we also had to bed down a few flower beds for the winter but piling in 6 inches of mulch to help lock in the warmth and keep the winter weather away from the roots.

With 3 piles of mulch down we channeled our efforts into the edging even had enough time to tidy up the over spilling sand along the edge of the playground. 300 metres of pathways perfectly (well kind of) edged of we had enough time for the Anna K 1 kilometre timed up. For the first time including the route creator Anna!!

A scintillating turn of speed from everyone around the course had our hearts racing endorphins jumping!!

Heading back to the Bakehouse with quiz questions swirling about time zones and daylight savings. Where we stretched out and headed off into the night!

See you next week for another fun filled Tuesday!!

Smooth Running

Joel