On Monday evening, Area Activator Simon did a nice, easy walk (on tired ultra-running legs) over to the Arsenal Community Hub on Benwell Road. Upon his arrival, he caught up with Dharmesh, Katie, Alex, Victoria and Claire, ready for a steady run across the borough on a warm Summer's evening. We started out with a dynamic warm up (with a focus on getting the stabilising muscles - quads, glutes and hamstrings mobile) before running towards St Mungo's Community Centre on Hilldrop Crescent (while avoiding the roadworks caused by unexpected flooding earlier in the day. Victoria had already been a hero for her neighbours- blocking their home with sand bags to keep the tides away- what a superstar!).

After climbing the Pankhurst Road slope, past the Cat 🐈 and Mouse 🐁 children's library, we arrived at St Mungos. Alison, Sally, Nurjehan, Giulia and Patrick met us at the big blue former church doorway to the centre. The team at St Mungos were absolutely thrilled with the progress we had made on the gardening project for the entrance and pathways around the centre, so we agreed to return to add the finishing touches this time!

Our objective this time was to trim away as much over hanging foliage and greenery as possible, to allow for easy access into the centre. Tall Goodgym runners like Alex and Patrick were particularly helpful for this particular task! Sally, Nurjehan, Giulia and Clare also did a smashing job of clipping away loads of overgrown grass surrounding the main doorway. We were also tasked with removing some troublesome weeds and brambles from these green spaces too- gathering up as much as we safely could, and disposing of it appropriately. Patrick made friends with a cute little shield bug while pulling some weeds, who seemed quite happy to sit on his Goodgym top while he worked.

Any property on Camden Road is susceptible to being a wind trap for litter, gathered from the Camden and Islington boroughs, so we also committed to helping out with some litter picking around the building, particularly around the newly trimmed hedgerows. It has been really wonderful to see the outcome from 40 minutes of graft by good people- very satisfying work!

As we closed up the group run for the night, we celebrated Area Activator Simon's 3rd year as a leader for the group- starting before the pandemic, keeping a crew together while the world went upside down, and enjoying our resurgence as we return to some sort of normality. It was been a blast! It was wonderful to enjoy some refreshments at the Highbury Library bar, post run!

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News

Elizabeth House Food Hub

As part of the Summer Holiday season, Goodgym Islington have been lending a hand with the amazing crew at Elizabeth House Food Hub, the local community supermarket of donated food and provisions in the Arsenal and Highbury boroughs. Additional demand over the holidays mean that shopping and essential item deliveries on foot would make a lifetime for local families.

We will be back on Tuesday 16th August:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/school-s-out-elizabeth-house-food-hub-deliveries-0d6bd601-7257-47d4-95fc-50cc0cb6276b

and Tuesday 23rd August:

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/school-s-out-elizabeth-house-food-hub-deliveries-ce5b8a33-6627-40c8-8cb0-fd5a2ccc53fb