We returned to the place it all began this week, running the 2km to Long Lane Pasture to shovel some compost. We were actually shifting the piles of compost that we created last summer, when we piled up all that cut grass and hay. I did not realise how long it takes for compost to become compost!

We started with a quick intro at the cinema where we all met Luke – give him a cheer for his very first run with us!

With many GG Barnet runners still in Riga, it was great to see we still had such a wonderful turnout for the task at hand. We started off with a gentle jog down to Cherry Tree Wood to warm up on the grass before Heather lead the team towards Long Lane Pasture. Amanda missed Hazel and her portable speaker, telling me running without the GG Barnet playlist just wasn't the same! You can add tracks to the GG Barnet Tunes playlist here.

We arrived at Long Lane Pasture in about 20 minutes – our longest run in weeks! The Pasture team greeted us and showed us our task. Nicola did a wonderful job raking the pathways of catepillars (not real catepillars), which fall from the trees and kill the grass. Luke and Lilian both took a few scratches from the brambles and I was very impressed (and also a little worried) with Amanda's commitment to getting a good team photo at the end. We do have the best photos in Barnet.

We finished up with a running game around a big ring path, before heading back to base.

This week's Barnet Biscuit was homemade cloud cookies and ginger & cinnamon biscuits courtesy of Joanna

I don't know if 'cloud cookie' is the actual name, but Louis and I both agreed that's what it was like eating.

Join us next week for our VERY LAST EVER run to Hammerson Nightingale care home on the Bishops Ave. We will be packing up the library. The home is being knocked down, so this will be our goodbye GoodGym good deed. It's 1km each way.

These are the missions I mentioned today:

Saturday

Allotments in Harringey

Night of 1000 PBs NW5

Sunday

Animal Home NW10

Creos N10

Clear Ms P's Patio N4

15 GoodGym-ers ran a total of 4.5km to help a care home with a rather unusual task.

It was great to see so many GG-ers at this week’s run, particularly so many newbies! Massive shout out to Jess, Jeff and Nicola who came along for the first time – be sure to give them a cheer on the GG website! (Click their names – you can support each other from each others profiles, too.) Also a big welcome to Tejeswita and Dan who joined the Barnet crew this week from other boroughs. It was such a treat to see so many new faces! (It's also very much a treat to see so many of the same faces, so keep coming back.)

Jess actually decided to come along after seeing the GoodGym BBC feature this week, so that’s exciting! I’m pleased it worked!

Dorian was the first GG-er to join me this week, followed soon after by the rest of the gang. As it was halloween this week, Hazel brought along her cape, which Damian wore beautifully as he lead us up the Bishop’s Avenue to the Nightingale Hammerson care home.

We were greeted by 6 wonderful residents and activities coordinator Chris, who even provided a box of chocolates to share. Our task this evening was to hang out with the residents and tell them about what we do; we came by a few weeks ago to clean out their shed and they were very curious about us. Thank you to Freya and Heather for helping with photo-taking duties. I think today might be the first week I have GG Barnet pictures I’m actually in, apart from Long Lane Pasture! That’s a treat. For me, anyway.

It was a really nice task. Being able to have a direct impact on somebody’s day is a really nice thing and these women were all so pleased to see us. I gave a quick intro into GoodGym Barnet and GG more generally, before the rest of you wonderful runners explained a bit more. We then spent about half an hour chatting and sharing stories. The care home is being cleared at the moment for an upgrade and residents are slowly moving to other facilities, so there aren’t too many people left. Chris said this was the busiest the living room had been for quite some time and thanked us lots for coming and filling it with so much positivity.

She then offered us the common room to do our fitness session in before our run back to base, which was a massive treat! Exercising on carpet is definitely much nicer than tarmac and meant we could do a loads of fun exercises like burpies and squat walkouts. I know everybody loves burpies, secretly. And just look how high Hazel was getting in the picture above! BOOM

We did some squat and side-lunge walks followed by three rounds of full-body strength and conditioning exercises. There was a focus on core strength, because a strong core makes for all the difference as you take on those longer runs.

We then said our goodbyes and headed back to base, taking a slightly longer route home. Special thanks to Teje, Jess, Heather and Jeff for keeping me company at the back of the pack tonight.

After a quick stretch, Damian whipped out the homemade pumpkin seed flapjacks he brought along, which everybody agreed were yummy.

This week’s Barnet Biscuit of the Week is: Party Rings. Classic.

Freya has requested next week we find some ice gems. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

Don’t forget this Saturday is the GG Parkrun tour in Oakhill Park, which means it’s on our turf. So we should all go! It’ll be great if you can make it down. The run starts at 9am, there’s no pressure if you wanna go fast or you wanna go slow. If you’d like to sort your DBS checks out, bring your docs along and I’ll do it afterwards.

And Sunday is Zombie Evac. We’re in the 10am wave, so meet at Allianz Park at 9.30 to sort ourselves out. I’ve been offered a free ticket if anyone wants it in exchange for writing a review. They offered it to me too late and I’ve already bought mine! Book here if you wanna play.

Sign up for next week’s task here. We’ll be running to do good nearby. It’ll be fun and good and I’ll reveal more soon.

More pics to be added soon! Just waiting on the ladies to say it's ok.

On a chilly October evening in Hackney 21 lively GoodGymers ran 6k to start a massive project with Core CIC buy starting to clear the building out in record time.

We started the evening by welcoming our GoodGym first times and high fiving our returning runners from their little breaks! 👏🏻👏🏽👋👋🏾

After a few big ups to the GoodGym Cross Country Team for a great first races of the season we got underway lead excellently by Hackney Task Force's Clare who guided us through the bright lights of Hackney expertly. We arrived at the brand new Core CIC building to meet Danny one of the Co directors of the project who walked and talked us through the amazing vision he has for the building and providing a location to help treat muscular skeletal disorders at reduced or no cost for the people of Hackney. If you want to find out more about the project check out the website and video here.

After the tour we got down to business removing all the ceiling tiles we could reach on the first floor at an impressive rate! Ripping up flooring, taking up carpets, dismantling shelving, taking apart kitchens. You name it we ripped it apart!

As the time ticked on we cleared up the space and took all the unwanted stuff out to be dumped in a skip, where we made a brilliant discovery Vintage clothing, there was a mad scramble and many outfits were tried on all beautifully modelled by Amy, Clare, Becky, Eva and Kate.

With a big thank you from Danny, we headed off into the night with a job well done on the 3k run back to base, a few stretches and very quite round of applause we finished the run but not the evening.

19 of the crew headed around the corner to TAD Turkish restaurant to get our eat on and had a great time doing so.

Brilliant to see so many of you come along to the monthly social and really hope you all can come along again on the next one which will be on the 22nd of November (put it in your diaries). A big thank you to Cecilia for choosing and organising the restaurant really appreciated, thank you!!

Next week we are off to Mabley Green to put some trees to bed for the winter! Be great to have you along for some more fun on the run! There will be a few running drills and skills thrown in for good measure to! If you have one bring a head torch or anything that lights up. Sign up here I also see that Hackney GoodGym Great Kev is making special visit from his new home in Bristol.

The Regents Park 10k race is coming on fast on Sunday the 6th of November and be great if we had a Hackney crew go down and dominate a top 10k race! All the information is here. Any questions about it give me a shout.

Pritesh of GoodGym social fame is wanting to do an East London GoodGym Monthly social! If you have any ideas of top drinking establishments for the GoodGym family to come visit either drop Pritesh a line on Twitter or tell me and I will pass it on.

Soft and smooth steps

Joel