An inglorious mission.

After 20 minutes trying to find the Group, I bumped into Amy and Chris who had been doing the same. After more fruitless searching, we decided to go find some Balsam to bash.

And as Amy, Chris and I hunted for Balsam, we missed Esse, who had come all the way from Wandsworth to join the mission.

And the Himalayan balsam proved equally elusive, the forests of 6ft stems of previous years were nowhere to be found. After numerous nettle stings we eventually realized they were there, just really really weedy, most almost completely hidden by the other vegetation. The cold April/May weather seems to have set them back several weeks.

So we cut our losses and headed home, being thankful that a rather frustrating Bank Holiday GoodGym mission was only a minor inconvenience compared with a flooded engine.

30 Brilliant GoodGymers ran 5k or 8k to begin the decorating project at the Open Barber's in Shorditch.

The vibes at GoodGym Hackney are off the charts!! Not only did we have a bumper attendance of 30 runners, we also got in some serious serious training in! Not to mention the 19 of us that went to the pub after to send Kev on his way to Bristol with a smile and a brand spanking new and well earned 100 GoodDeed T-Shirt. 🏃🏽🏃🏻🏃🏿🏃😀😀💪🏻💪🏽💪🏾🍻🍷🍹🍗🍖🍟.

We joint mobilised ready for running action then were superbly led through the back streets of Hackney by Team Hackney Task force member extraordinaire Cecilia. After a 2.5k run we arrived on time ready for action, to help scrape away the old shop frontage and ceiling of the crowd funded social enterprise Open Barbers, where we met Richard who was a little taken back by the strength in numbers of Team Hackney! We split into 2 teams, first team armed themselves with Heat Guns and Scrapers and got to work removing the old paint. The second group went with PTI Patrick and dominated a series of pick your poison exercises which tested all the runners conditioning to the max 💪🏾💪🏽💪🏻.

After a 15 minute burst of activity the teams changed over and continued the hard graft, some amazing high scrapping and some especially impressive Abdominal planks took Team Hackney to the edge!

After 35 minutes of scraping the shop to within an inch of its life we decided that the Speedy Crew had been coasting for a couple of weeks so wanted to really test them. So the Speedy Crew left early, leaving Task Force member Jack in charge of the clean up and the 2.5k run back to base with the Sexy Crew

The Speedy Crew raced off into the night going through the running gears at will, smashing out some Urban Fartlek reps that Mo Farah would have been proud of. We then found our old racing track in De Beauvoir Square and set about smashing our some monstrous changes of pace on our half and full lap hard reps 🔥🔥🔥⚡️⚡️⚡️. After a short recovery jog we through in a few Kenyan Surges along Middleton Road, as we entered London Fields we laid the hammer down and it was every runner for them selves for an all out effort back to the Bakehouse. To round out a 5.5k run back! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 Top effort Speedies The Sexy crew cheered us in as they had just got back from their Tempo effort along Whiston road to round off an impressive running evening for all!

As it was Kev's last run and 100th we headed out to celebrate at a local Pub, thanks to the 19 runners that came along it w great to see the social side of Team Hackney coming through especially to celebrate a true GoodGym Hall of Famer in Kev. Kev you will be missed in these parts and please come and see us when you visit the Big Smoke!!

Next week we start a fabulous serious of tasks with HUG (Hackney Downs User Group) so please please please please please (yes I am begging for you both to come and sign up so I can organise tasks for the right amount of people) Sign up here. Want to make it clear I still really want you to come if you forget to sign up but would love it if you did sign up a little bit more xx

Until next week

Stride Smooth

Joel