This week's task was led by fellow GoodGymer, Paul, who had signed up to the Surfers Against Sewage Million Mile Clean - equipping us with some professional litter-picking garb and turning us into bona fide citizen scientists. The mission? To clear (a corner of) Finsbury Park of litter, and play a bit of brand bingo - submitting data on which brands were littering our park.

Steph Ducat, Louise, Da Marcus, and Mehmet ran down from Arsenal Community Hub together, meeting the others at the South East gates of Finsbury Park to get started on the task.

Since becoming a run leader, I've wanted to re-start the old warm-up ritual of doing a register, each person saying their name and then answering a random question. Finally, it began last night - and with a question that turned out to be more apt than I'd realised: "what's your favourite drink?".

Paul, who's preferred tipple is JD & Coke, managed to find not one but three (sadly empty) bottles of Jack Daniels littered around the park's borders; and Louise, who favours Strongbow Dark Fruits, also hit her jackpot, as did Da Marcus with a can of Iced Tea. Sadly I didn't find any kombucha bottles littered around Finsbury Park... 😆

We were treated to an incredible red sunset, and even attracted some questions from other park users about how they could get involved and host similar litter picks in their areas.

Altogether we collected 5 sacks of litter, collectively walking 5.6 miles as we picked - in Paul's words: "legendary stuff 🙌🏻!"

There was lots of excitement for next week's session building paths in Caledonian Park - see you there?

Nine GoodGymers made their way to ARC Community Centre last night, meeting Amy and Autumn at their canal-side community garden in a mission to clear the decks — or rather, the beds — ready for a season of planting.

And what better way to celebrate Amy's 200th GoodGym session than with her hosting us!

Five of us ran there from Arsenal and joined another four there. The main task was clearing a long pile of dead shrubbery from along the fence, trying to fit it into two big garden waste sacks like a game of tetris. Louise put her sawing skills to the test, beelining it for the fattest of branches, while Deirdre fiercly attacked and bashed the overflowing bag of branches with a spade, and Mehmet and Luke demonstrated impressive feats of strength, hoisting a hefty railway sleeper into place to squash down the contents of the other bag. We're not as scary a bunch as that sounds...

Steph Ducat carefully dug out burdock and prepared the ground at the end of the garden for a tree that will be planted later this week. And over at the wildflower roundabout, Caitlin, Da Marcus, and Deirdre made a (small) start on weeding.

Looking forward to returning in a few weeks to continue with their great work...

Last night's session saw 9 GoodGymers roll up at Elizabeth House Community Centre, helping to stack chairs, clean tables, and sweep the floor after their foodbank in record time. Although I'm not sure we managed to rid the floor of every sparkle of glitter!

As is often the case with this task - we were rewarded with surplus bread and veg to take home (has anyone tasted those mustard seeds?! They're fiery!!)

5 GoodGymers took a gentle 2.5 km run to get there too - although we all bailed out of the run back, opting instead to head directly home to cook up our leeks and munch on our bread, much to the disappointment of Luke who really wanted to witness me running laps of the stadium with 2 leeks and a baguette in tow... next time!