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?

Last night's task was a true workout, carrying sleeper after sleeper down to the bottom of the garden, ready to be used to construct a stage for the annual Olden Community Garden music festival.

It took 6 GoodGymer's to lift and lug each sleeper, and a lot of good communication and coordination to avoid any disastrous injuries. We didn't quite fulfill Charles' high ambition of relocating the entire pile, but after shifting 9 sleepers, I think it's fair to say we'd all had a good work out and felt pretty pleased with ourselves. I can certainly feel it in my arms today!

Great work to Jennifer for getting stuck in on her first session (welcome!). Aside from some seeing many faithful GG Islington regulars, it was great to meet Denzel from GG HQ, and Ernestas, local coucillor and long-time GG-er.

See you at Finsbury Park next week!?