A big Goodgym welcome to Martin and Cassia who joined us for their first Brighton Goodgym group run. Roy's quest for a parkrun PB was another near miss but perhaps Santa will bring one over Christmas and we can give him a cheer in the New Year. And well done to Andy for winning his league in his running club!

After a short run we arrived at Sloane Court, a council run seniors accommodation with a very big garden and resident Tony showed us to the very large shrubs that were blocking the back gate. Some of us set to work on cutting back hard, whilst others worked on clearing and weeding paths, and after about 30 minutes we'd achieved what would take one person most of a day. Tony was delighted, even though at the end he told us to 'jog on!'

The fitness session was an advent calendar special, with 2 teams racing for the numbered cones and then everyone completing the present of lots of lovely exercises written on the back of the number. By this time the evening (and our bottoms) had turned somewhat soggy, despite the forecast for a fine evening, we even had a bit of thunder and lightening.

See you all at the social on Thursday, 6.30pm at the Globalls at Brighton Marina and then TGI's for 7.45pm. If not have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, thanks for all your efforts over the last year, looking forward to more getting fit by doing good in 2020!

Fourteen amazing Team Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to and from the Wilton Estate community garden to turn over the soil in the Paddock and remove some really clingy Roots.

On a not so Spring like March evening Team Hackney were ready for action! We met ask usual at the Bakehouse before speedy off into the night to our warm up track behind the Town Hall. Where we got our key running muscles and joints mobilised with a series of exercises to enable us to dominate our second instalment of our Plyometric training block. Plyometrics have been shown to improve runners Balance, Power, Strength and Flexibility so a really good way to getting us well on our way towards our running and fitness Goals. We had a special Super Set action going on with first multidirectional both single and double legged hops straight into some brilliantly executed lower body strength exercises. We hopped both high and long and we squatted and Lunged strong. After 15 minutes of pulsating leg action we were ready to roll. We were lead to the task expertly by Cecilia who navigated the streets of H-Town perfectly. We met Debbie and Lisa at the ever expanding community garden to gave us the tools for task success. Armed with Hoes, forks, spades and some lean mean Mattocks we split into two units and went into battle. Unit one hacks away in the dark corners of the garden and some of the most determined roots around but hey were no match for Team Hackney's might and the Mottcks proved their worth to remove all the roots for the soon to be raspberry patch. Meanwhile with DJ Pat spinning the illuminated Decks the Paddock's soil was being turned over at a majestic rate. The pace increased as the first unit came to add their force for a final push to task glory. 60 metres of soil turned over to allow some beautiful wild flower planting over the weekend means a job well done 👏🏾👏🏼👏🏻. Debbie and Lisa thanked us for our efforts and we split into the familiar Speedy and Sexy groups for a game of Chase back to Base!!. Team Sexy started with a 4 minute cushion on our 3.4k run to base, with an ever improving band our runners it would require a Herculean effort for Team Speedy to catch up but with some real tight lines run at the front by the the Speedy Leader Cecilia the ground was being made up with every stride. As we entered Broadway market Team Sexy could not hold them off any longer and after a super sprint finish everyone was was applauded in after giving their all great running Team 🏃🏽🏃🏿🏃🏻🏃.

As few cool down stretches and a reminder about all the options for running and volunteering at Hackney Half Marathon we were on our way after a great Tuesday night GoodGym fix.

Next week we are Double tasking at Gillett Square and with the Food Growers Group so please please come along, bring a friend! We have a few Super special guests from the amazing training platform that is Strava as well as a huge treat for the Sexy crew as they will be Super smoothly lead home by GoodGym founder and all around top guy Ivo. Please please sign up here

Until next week,

Smoothly cruise into your half marathon training

Joel