7 runners ran 7km to clear leaves and pull up weeks from the Thornton Heath Rec flowerbeds

Despite being still a bit chilly, it was great running weather for one of our longer runs - seven brave runners headed out to our regular warm-up spot where we received many interested glances as we high knee-d, side stepped and stretched our way round in circles! We headed out as one group with the faster runners looping around brilliantly, before all arriving together ready for the task.

Unfortunately we were unable to complete the planned task of digging a trench, as after a quick check it turned out that the ground was still completely frozen after the snowy weather at the weekend. So Atul from Friends of Thornton Heath Rec found some new gardening tasks for us, which he explained when we arrived at the park. We made a start by filling a huge bag with fallen leaves from the flowerbeds and picking up some litter from around the garden. Then we moved round the corner to the flowerbeds that we planted with bulbs last year – excitingly the Tulips we planted are growing really well! We cleared more leaves from this area and then weeded around the plants, so that the flowerbeds are ready for sunflowers to be planted soon.

Powered back by some delicious chocolate eggs kindly given to us by Atul, we upped the pace on our run back with some ‘Fartlek’ interval training. Everyone took turns to choose when we started the next sprint and there were some very impressive accelerations from all the runners. The calls of ‘Fartlek’ definitely received some interesting looks from passers-by! We then finished up with some stretching and cool-down when we got back.

A big GoodGym Croydon welcome to new runner Claire who got stuck right in to the task and the run - hope to see you back soon!

As I mentioned, next Tuesday we will be heading to Good Deeds in a Lovely Garden at White Horse Park - It's also the last Tuesday of the month, so time for the BoxPark social – see you there!