What a cracking way to start 2020 with Goodgym Islington- taking on one of our favourite annual tasks! 18 runners joined us at the Arc Centre last night (our alternative start location due to a rare Monday football match- back to the Emirates Hub next week) to gather Christmas Trees from the area immediately surrounding Rosemary Gardens. Welcome to our first timers Stephen and Nicholas, well done for getting stuck in!

The Count-Off

Before setting off, we asked the question: What are your New Year's Resolutions? Are you giving up anything? Starting anything? Or are they rubbish?

Our answers included:

• Continue training for London Marathon
• No more caffeine
• I'm a dry vegan!
• Going to actually listen to my physio...
• Nah. No changes. Keep doing what I'm doing!

Rosemary Gardens

We jogged over to our local Christmas Tree drop-off point in Rosemary Gardens, and became aware of what a massive task we were about to undertake- there were Christmas Trees everywhere! Islington is clearly a hotspot for Christmas Tree dumping.

Firstly, we performed a few warm-up drills (ankling, high knees, can-cans) to get the blood pumping. We then split into pairs, and ran a mini-circuit session. Half the group across the park and back to stretch the legs, whilst the other half of the group preformed a series of lateral leg swings, whilst holding onto their partner's shoulders for balance.

These paired up groups then became groups of 4 and 5, and our Goodgym crew scoured the local area hunting and dropping off Christmas Trees for approx 40 minutes (or as long as we could before our arms got tired!). Someone mentioned that they had found a "Festive Christmas Graveyard" of discarded trees just 100m away from our drop off point!

Honestly, it was pretty insane how many trees we gathered up in this time. The drop point was absolutely full to the brim, and we needed to enlist some top level tree wanging skills to fit them all in. We estimate that 105 trees were picked up within our time limit, and there were still plenty more to grab in the surrounding area (we also suspect that word got out that we were collecting trees, as some mysterious pines started appearing outside people's front doors).

Starter Session

This Sunday, we will be hosting an additional group run session for the January Challenge- a great introduction to Goodgym for new participants. And it's on a weekend!

Back to the Arc Centre to help clean and tidy their community space for the new year. We will start with a fitness session in the local area, but the task itself will be indoors.

Sign up here for more information.

Met League Cross Country

The next fixture for the Met League XC season is this Saturday (11th January) at the easily accessible Ally Pally! Goodgym Race Team is an extension of Goodgym which participates in events throughout the year, and is excellent fun. If you have never tried cross country before, I fully recommend joining our friendly, all abilities crew to give it a try.

Sign up here for more information about the Alexandra Palace fixture.