17 people ran 8k to Stanhope Community Garden to weed and tidy the area

Tonight we welcomed Charlotte for the first time to GG Brum. It was also nice to meet Brendan, Fiona, Rea and Andy who came last week while I was splashing around in the sea!

We set off to Stanhope, armed with gloves ready to get stuck into some gardening. As we arrived the group did one sharp hill sprint......little did they know this was just a warm up for later.

Once at the task, our job was to weed, weed and more weed. Also put some rhubarb leaves on the compost heap as apparently it makes great compost! Garry picked plenty of the rhubarb to take back to maybe make a pie or even better some wine!

Once done with the task and messing about with rhubarb, as it was rather warm tonight (Sam got himself fanned down by Rob with a rhubarb leaf!) I decided to change from the flat interval training to some ‘Kenyan hills’!

Killer sess

Now this is tough.......basically it involves running hard up the hill but also hard back down, with the idea that you naturally recover Running downhill anyway.....trust me the Kenyans know best! The task was eight minutes of pain! Aaron made the early Running, followed by Brendan, Andy and Hannah. Rea was very light on her feet showing great form. John showed great endurance finishing strongly. Kate helped pull Charlotte along on her first session, certainly a tough introduction! Fiona was excellent digging in showing a great arm action. Altogether though it was a great sight to see, everyone working hard as a unit pulling each other along. Personally, I think that could have been the toughest GG Brum fitness session to date, so top work everyone :-)

Once done we still had another 3k to get back to 1000 Trades and Garry and Karin had the added challenge of completing it with bags of rhubarb! Anyway, we all got safely back with some very tired bodies.

A special mention to Andy who is now heading off to Valencia for work, so unfortunately won’t be with us in the near future, best of luck to you, enjoy the sunshine :-)

Next week we will be out doing good again, it would be great if you could join us sign up here.

17 runners ran 6 km to help clean at Sifa Fireside in Birmingham.

On a lovely sunny evening we were tonight joined by four fantastic new recruits, Brendan, Fiona, Rea and Andy. Give them a shout out fellow GoodGymers! Well done to Aron and Rhea on completing their events at the weekend too! After our intro briefing was complete we set off for Digbeth and the task. Around 2 miles later we arrived at our task for tonight - Sifa Fireside, a frequently visited one for Goodgym Birmingham. Drinks were kindly ready for us when we got there and much appreciated this evening as it was certainly a warm one! We were greeted by Andy who like myself was also filling in this evening. Although visited many times before with some new members tonight Andy gladly agreed to say a few words about the important work Sifa does in helping those who are homeless. He also outlined our task for tonight: 4 areas to clean – men’s and females showers and toilets, sitting area and a final one for everything else. The team split up and set about cleaning, shining, dusting and tidying all the areas. They did a brilliant job, 15 minutes blast of work and you could see the difference with everything looking spick and span!

A quick photo outside and we were on our way again, this time round the corner for our Fitness Session. Tonight’s location was a handily located, nearby, quiet car park. After firstly trying to go through a locked side gate we found the main entrance and headed through there. Once in we were straight into some HITT exercises, 1 minute of squats with a high knee lift followed up by scissor lunges. Great effort and energy shown by all! To break it up we then had a flat all out sprint to the other side of the car park. Two more sets of exercises followed, this time squat jumps and ski squats so all in all a lot of squats! A great exercise though to help those key running leg muscles. Another sprint back across this time focusing on posture and really pumping those arms, lung bursting performances all round. We finished with two partner exercises to work on our upper body strength, which we can’t forget plays an important role in running as well. First exercise was facing your partner hands flat together one pushes towards partners shoulders while the other resists, we did 10 times then switch. Second exercise dubbed ‘the titanic’ by the group involved one partner stood in front of the other, they raise their arms to shoulder height then release back down to the legs. Again, we did 10 times then switched over, great displays of effort and strength on show here! Rounded off with a final sprint then headed back to base. For the return run we split into two paced groups with Aron front marking the lead group and myself back marking it. Then Abbie front marking the second group and Garry back marking it. Thank you to all the markers!

Back at base we stretched off, shared some run report title ideas – squats, car park locked out, titanic poses and my suspect timing watch for the exercises were all mentioned! Top work all for this week, Jonny will be back with us next week after his holidays. Look forward to seeing you all on next week’s task where we will be off to do gardening at Stanhope Community Garden. Sign up for here