Stephen Tolfree

What's ten-and-half-tonnes between friends?

Turns out it wasn’t actually nine tonnes but nineten-and-a-half. Love a challenge.

So we met outside the Hub where Joelle gave us a brief history of the park, and some interesting key stats.

We then made our way over to the children’s playground for our Task briefing:

• Shovel sand into wheelbarrows by the Changing rooms.

• Navigate the 5-min walk/wheel back to Playground, depositing sand on areas where it’s most needed (edge of swings; bottom of slides).

• Rake and distribute sand evenly.

• Return wheelbarrows to sand pile for refilling.

• Repeat.

• Repeat.

• Repeat.

• Repeat.

• Repeat.

… You get the picture.

The team were something else. They didn’t stop: they were like machines. I don’t know how (I consider myself fit but I caved in after one trip, such was the forearm fatigue).

After 90 minutes of hard graft we called time (“Send the last barrow out at 8:30”) before returning tools to shed, enjoying a quick stretch and bidding farewell to Joelle and Richard. Until next time 🤞.

Well done everyone - it was fast, it was furious, and as always, it was phenomenally good fun.

A huge huge warm welcome and shout-out to Iain whose first GoodGym event it was and who was unstoppable (literally). We watched, we marvelled… We wondered how. Thanks for a brilliant contribution and we really hope to see you soon.

Another warm Wednesday evening at the massive echoey warehouse saw Fiona, Jem, Stephen, PvT and myself helping out Taidgh and Chris from Crisis by getting stuck into box ordering by sequence, everyone's favourite task of pallet wrapping, loading of monitor screens and keyboards in a delicate balancing act and then using the pallet trucks to shift everything around in some form of co-ordinated fashion to enable Taidgh to demonstrate his forklifting skills moving all of this remaining IT equipment to the loading bay.

In spite of the subterranean conditions in the warehouse, it proved to be warm work, but 19 pallets later our tasks were complete - Chris was most grateful as this time last year he'd had to do all that work on his own.

Still no definitive date for Crisis to exit the building, and definitely more work for Friday's group to get done...and yet again, it was still light and warm when we exited the building.

A hot, humid Monday was no match for tonight's GoodGym runners who turned up in a whopping group of 12 for this evening's Monday Meath fitness session.

We welcomed first time runners, Tj, Stephanie and Geir before starting with a stretch; proceeding to some mobility and balance work, before tackling tonight's drills and speedwork.

We then whizzed through our mini-band workout but be sure there was nothing mini about this workout. We tackled lower body, abs and core and upper body, before finishing with our favourite greyhound-and-hare speedy lap of the park, and calling it a night with our Peaceful Music playlist, and some stretches under the sky.

We then said our farewells.

Well, some of us did while others headed off with Stephen, (Task Force Pro, who's heading up our new social squad), to the pub. What a great way to end your first GoodGym event - well done everyone.

Another lovely evening, working hard, enjoying one another's company, looking forward to sociable summer get togethers.

A full house of GoodGym-ers attended Stepney City Farm under the guidance of Siobhan with Emma and Paula leading the task.

Everyone pulled their socks up and got stuck in.

Stephen and Eva battled it out with their puntics and came up with some absolute gems...

Great big wooden boards were loaded on trolleys and laid against the pig enclosure whilst Mars admired/instructed from his side of the fence, an absolutely enormous pile of wood chips was shovelled and used to cover a veritable hedge of nettles just in front of the pig couple, huge great chunks of wood were picked up and piled up nearby. Siobhan seemed happy and exclaimed that she thought it would take a week, but with GoodGym helping out it was done in an hour and a half!

Aziz turned up not wearing his GG shirt because he likes to “be different” but Sara, Joanne and Eva followed suit.

I was particularly impressed with John this evening- I mean he worked hard (and he always does) - because he exemplified magnificent colour coordination and wore lilac purple shorts and purple gloves.

Emma wore Birkenstocks and jeans. She probably won’t do it again.

Rohan remarked that everyone and everything was “just marvellous, wonderful” and he had a cracking time, as did we all.

Welcome to Sara for her first ever session.

Thanks to everyone for turning up, working hard and making the time so enjoyable.

Seven of us went to the Half Moon pub afterwards and were led by Stephen our current Social Club Grand Master Pro.

I’ll leave you with this pearl from Eva: “ How much woodchip can a GoodGymer shift if a GoodGymer could shift wood chip?”