A dozen of us saw off our last session in February last night, clock change is springing up on us (I only pun by mistake) and that's something to perk up for, not long now folks, hang tough. Soon we'll be doing tasks under superb twilight skies, with a warm radiant tanned glow, glistening modestly in the sweat of good deeds, eating pizzas fired up alfresco, clinking drinks on the deck of a boat. Let's play the long game.

Alex's firsts session and Richard's second, a decent medium length run to get your teeth into, there's much more variety coming your way, hope to see you both next week for more. Our Random Weekly Question was "You're an all powerful autocratic dictator for the day, what one thing do you?" Humorous to earnest answers flowed, in that order, I want to live under this benevolent collective dictatorship. Creating the world's largest cookie, doubling train carriage lengths, giving free lunches to everyone, offer affordable housing, get rid of all politicians, ban e-scooters, make all flying environmentally friendly(!), banning all cars and this week's winner: moving away from a linear economy to a circular one. Yup - that was Hilary, though feel free to claim it.

3.2k later and I was faffing around with a padlock in Clapton, eventually cracking the code like somes sort of litter picking magician. We were in, equipment was dished out, only the three bags used this time after feedback from January. Two teams assembled, one headed into the urban north the other into the desolate south, with an objective to collect as much crap as possible. Think we did pretty well, considering it's unbelievably clean, it's actually more of an eye-training exercise than anything, honing night-vision for the apocalypse, perhaps. Note to self, must buy more tinned food. Anyway, we came back to the start point and compared bag weight though an unbiased independent referee, there was a barely a few grams in it and impossible to judge with current weighing technology...it was a draw.

We had a jaunt back and wrapped up with some stretching, a few of us ventured to the pub for our end of month social. Pretty good midweek by my estimations, cheers for the efforts guys. Good luck to all our guys on Sunday at the Big Half, make us proud.

Till next week, where we're helping out a local school, sign up here

Have a good one,

B

We swerved the precipitation last night for a bone dry fitness assault in The Olympic Park.

Angela couldn't be at the adventure playground, with a poorly child. So instead we delved into some movement and effort. But not before our RWQ : " If you could pick any job, where pay wasn't a factor, what would you do?" Artists and authors came out of the wood work, conservationists and chefs, RSPCA workers and musicians, fun-employed GoodGymers and Joke Shop owners, plus my favourite this week - 'Head of Global Wildlife'.

We kicked off our session with 4 x ~500m, a little compare and contrast to earlier in the year. Objective: get quicker each rep, but only by a few seconds. A resounding success, most did just this, showing great control of speed under fatigue. These ~ 2min reps are a superb training tool, not a flat out sprint, but a controlled hard run, they increase your maximum oxygen uptake and are known as VO2 max workouts.

Small selection of core work came next, leg throws, plank twists, partnered paloff resists and some box jumps. Finishing off the set with some flat out 15 sec sprints, nothing gets you as fired up as a flat out sprint. Recruiting the explosive muscles harnessed in the box jumps to make you go further and faster.

Superb work one and all, especially Richard, on his first session - we'll be back doing good next week at the school, sign up here

If I haven't harassed you enough about Saturday: Sign up here for parkrun takeover (volunteer, pace?, or just run if no space). Or here for tree planting.

See you lot Saturday or next week

Have a goody

B