Twenty fighting fit Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to the Wilton Estate community garden to remove millions of shrubs, thousands of roots and turn over tonnes of soil.

On a beautiful clear full moon🌝🌝 lite evening we mixed things up a bit at GoodGym Hackney! As for one more week only we had access to the enchanting Disco Lights Running track in Victoria Park. So we were a little naughty and ran away from the task mobilising all the vital body parts on the way with a military style in line warm up. Side skipping, toe touching, walking lunging and even a few football heading ⚽️⚽️ got our bodies primed to throw down some speedily smooth accelerations down under the pulsating neon lights. Alternating power strength moves 💪🏾💪🏽 with balanced and coordinated technique drills our accelerations were silky smooth and Powerfully fast 🏃🏿🏃🏽🏃🏻🏃. 8 bursts of lighting speed⚡️⚡️ followed by a mini lungeathon to build on last weeks strength effort gave us a blood pumping start to the session.

As we were a little late we sent of 9 super speedy shrub excavation ninjas ahead to get started on the task, brilliantly lead by Kev (also Hackney Coach runner rep) the pack laid down a 2k burst at a scorching 7:30 per mile pace!! The sexy group made some strong running progress in pursuit, lots of running improvements shown with talk of wanting to do longer runs in lead up to the fantastic Hackney Half marathon. Special mention to GoodGym Hall of Famer Becky for expertly guiding a few GoodGym newbies on their first run. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

The speedy crew got down to business speedily as you would expect, uprooting shrubs, roots and anything else that got in their path to clear a huge flower bed in 20 hectic minutes of action! 🌳🌳 Looking for more work to be done they moved on to forking, shoving, Pickaxeing metre after metre of flower bed to prepar it for some beautiful wild flower planting 🌾🌼🌾. In 10 quick minutes the entire first section had been forked to death and ready to get flowery very soon. The sexy crew were busy getting tangled in ivy, battling roots and ripping out more shrubs to clear a 15 metre stretch of densely vegetated flower bed ready to become a beautiful and maybe tasty raspberry patch 🍓🍓🍓(near enough a raspberry). Becky was very unimpressed by my lack of Joni Mitchell hair knowledge!! So for anyone else who needed a pictorial reminded of how amazing Joni Mitchell's hair is click here Sorry Becky for my ignorance. A few epic root battles were had and after some brilliant team work the dream worked and after 30 minutes of action not a root was left or ivy steam to be found. Brilliant work team 👏🏻👏🏽👏🏾

After a massive thank you for brilliantly patient Debbie and Lisa we headed back the 1k to base basking in our task glory. After a stretch out we congratulated each other on a fun and fitness filled evening which greatly aided the wonderful Wilton Estate community garden.

If any woman would like to join in with a disco light running group this week check out the info here.

Next week we will be back to The Hive for another adventure in the most eclectic building in Hackney! Please sign up here it will be great fun and we will be running a few relays around De Beauvoir square for good measure!

Don't forget we will be going for a bite to eat after next weeks session if you fancy a bit for nutritional reward for your physical endeavours.

Until next week

Smoothly accelerate

Joel

More to follow

On a very blustery night 12 GoodGym runners headed down to Stepney City Farm with Anna and Andrew Cornick masterfully navigating the mazy East London streets. Splitting up into three teams we worked hard for 35 minutes moving fresh compost across the farm, one team loading wheelbarrows, one team running the barrows to the other compost heaps and one team on top of the heap turning the fresh compost over.

After the task was complete Simon from the Farm took us into the barn to see the 48 hour old new kid goats with their less than sprightly Mum over seeing proceedings. After 10 minutes of learning about goats and making suitable 'ahhh' noises Tom took us back down to earth. We ran out to Mile End Park where we followed the parkrun route completing fartlek intervals of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds repeatedly as we made our way back to base.

After a short stretch we disappeared into the gales of the night.