Here at BadGym there are three ways to be evil:

1) Group runs. We all meet up once an week and go and make the borough a little bit more dreadful to live in. We find newly-decorated community centres and graffiti the walls; we visit public gardens, pour bleach over the flowers and scatter dandelion seeds everywhere, and we occasionally "give people a bit of a kick-in"

2) Missions. A small group of runners go to a vulnerable person's house, find a job that they struggle to do themselves and make it even harder. Classic example include putting lots of heavy furniture in front of doorways and removing the handles from saucepans.

3) Coach runs. This is where a runner is paired up with an isolated older person that they visit once a week and terrorise. The basic idea is to get as drunk as possible, get a cab to their house, do a runner without paying your fare and then sit and abuse the older person for a good half hour or so.

Four new evil-doers joined us tonight: 'orrible Oscar, Scary Scott, Spirit Sophie and Haunted Hazel. We hope you hated it and never come back.

So, this evening we paid a visit to Barnsbury Community Centre. Our job for the evening was to pull up flowers and plant weeds. We also had to smear lots of dirt around the new floor tiles in reception. We worked hard at generally messing the place up for a good 20 minutes and it look awful when we left. Brilliant!

And there was lots of getting fat tonight. Atrocious Alex provided gummy sweets and chocolate beans, Dastorous Dan provided homemade ghoulish biscuits and Spooky Simon provided the usual biscuits.

Ghoulish Game of the evening was finding three hidden chocolate pumpkins concealed underneath cones. Can't remember who found them now and I don't care cos I'm evil. BTW They were poisonous! Ha ha ha ha ha!

And also lots of dressing up this evening. See main photo for the efforts. Some clever ideas with Frightening Frances dressing up as "plantar fasciitis" and Ghastly Graham as a Trump supporter, but by democratic vote Bella and Hazel were clear winners and fought over their prize: a little millkybar ghost. I hope it rots your teeth.

Our disgusting debate? The best way to murder somebody and get away with it. Notable ideas: Richard suggested reversing over somebody in your driveway and Chilling Charlie like the idea of Ricin. There were other good ones that I forgot. If that makes you feel left out then GOOD!

I hate you all. Please don't come back next week,
Spooky Si

P.S. there's a picture of a mushroom with another mushroom on it in the photos. This is because I accidentally copied it across with the other photos then thought you might want to see it anyway

9 GG Brenter's ran 6k, to shift 4 wheelbarrows of rocks, 8 of leaves and avoid 1 crafty little fox

On the coldest night of the year so far, the wrapped up and raring to go crew of Brent gathered eagerly at the good old Queensbury Pub on the high road of Willesden, for a housekeeping full of good cheer, good chats and the welcoming of 3 newbies into the fold YAY - The lovely Enrique, our only fella for the night and Sisters Tania and Eliza.

After welcomes and warm-ups the team hot-foot it through the chilly winds down to Harlesden Town Gardens where Gabriel was waiting with his trusty torch. The task to be achieved this night was a Wheel-barrow of laughs shifting piles of rocks to support the development of a rockery and leaves into the newly built comps patch. Needless to say we totally rocked it

After 40mins of back breaking shifts cheered on by a medley of my weird and wonderful spotify treats (summer and holiday inspired) We spaded, pushed and shovelled our way through the lot, managing to avoid Mr Fox who had taken up residence there.

Back to the road and it was fast, fast, fast all the way home. The team were like a speeding bullet, running like a pack of wolves in formation, a beautiful site to behold! Up hills, round bends, through the darkened parks. As we raced through the blackness there was only one thought in our minds, it's head torch season and our short shorts days are numbered.

Back at base we stretched and reviewed. Another epic night, fantastic vibe and laughter that carried our legs through the distance.

See you next time.

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

Welcome

Welcome Alison and Sophie doing their first runs this evening and hello to Becky and Laura who are quite the tourists having visited Peckham, Brixton and Kings Cross . A very warm welcome to GoodGym Highbury.

Well Done

Well done Danica on breaking 2 hours at the Richmond Half Marathon. After a string of bad luck and getting ill on race day she executed perfectly and smashed it. She was also sporting a lovely new haircut.

:) and :'(

And we welcomed back Caitlin! Caitlin recently achieved her 50 good deeds black t-shirt. Most of these have been done by visiting her coach. Give her a big cheer. Unfortunately Caitlin and Ryan are off to Amsterdam now so we won't see them any more :( BUT, there is a certain former GoodGym Camden trainer who is now based over there, so who knows, we may see GG Amsterdam before too long.

FROGG

It's been a while since we visited Grenville Road Gardens. Tonight we were helping FROGG (Friends of Grenville Road Gardens) cut back and bag up some ivy.

Since there were so many of us we split into two groups and each took turns doing 10 minutes of working and 10 minutes of exercising.

Ivy

Yep, the job for the evening was to get rid of ivy which had started to take over a bit. Tugging, pulling, yanking, chopping, lopping. Whatever we did it looked much much much clearer afterwards and Sarah was delighted with our efforts.

Flipping Mad

Meanwhile the group that was exercising played a game of "Heads and Tails".

A list of paired exercises, one easy and one tough, was produced and everybody had to choose Heads or Tails.

Following a coin flip those that guessed correctly got to do the easy one and those that FAILED had to SUFFER with the hard exercise. Ow. There were burpees (GROAN), press ups, alternate squat thrusts, reverse lunge high knee posture drive drill thingies. Mental stuff.

Hop To It

Thoroughly thoroughly warmed up after all that tossing it was competition time. How far can you leapfrog. Using a cone to mark the furthest distance, everybody had a go.

In the first group Will managed the furthest with a massive... erm, we didn't measure it but it was long. In the second group, Graham who jumped first was in the lead UNTIL Hugh equalled his effort. A jump off saw Hugh take the win.

The prize for being such a bounder? What else but a Freddo Frog!

Back to the Pool

For the way home we split into three groups. Caroline and Mel took an easier paced group, Steve led a medium pace and Simon took a gang on a faster run including a lap of letter fartlek around Emirates for good measure.

Double Debate

Back at base we voted on the DOUBLE DEBATE. Yes, that's right, we had two debates tonight. The first: what's better? Frogs or Toads? Frogs won, but a surprisingly large number didn't give a monkey's.

Second debate: is GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) pronounced witha hard or soft G? Well, the inventor says it is a soft G, but it does stand for Graphics which is a hard G, but then We don't pronounce the P in JPEG (Joint Photographics Expert Group) as an F? None of this matters, it went to the vote and the hard G won it. As is often the case at GG Islington everybody was wrong. Will suggested "Zhyff".

Next Week

To celebrate the end of Summer we are going to Sunnyside Community Garden next week. Be there!

Love and hugs,
Simon

Reports from Alex:

On a balmy August evening, 6 Tower Hamlets GoodGymmers congregated in Cambridge Heath, this time not for a task, but for a scenic run around the borough, as is traditional for Bank Holiday sessions. Axel headed the group as we sampled the glorious golden Victoria Park sunset as it permeated the trees lining the footway. After a lap of the park, the group split into two for a friendly competition - one group tackling a faster paced extra lap whilst the other headed back to base. Although we admired the ambition of the group doing the extra loop, the others won comfortably - a good thing too as they had the key to the bag drop! A really enjoyable group run, and we all look forward to getting stuck into a task next week as GoodGym Tower Hamlets assembles once more.

Click here for next week run