Hugelkultur, mulch and rock'n'roll!

2 amazing goodgymmers braved the cold temperatures to run 4km and help at Ealing Transition.

This morning I was joined by the awesome Angel for a GoodGym starter session. We knew we were gardening that day but we didn't know that we were to learn a whole new style of gardening!

As it was such a chilly morning, we started with a quick warm up to mobilise our joints, a few squats and we were ready to go! Although it was so cold it was a very pleasant morning as we made our way through Walpole park with a nice little run-walk to get us going. On arrival Trevor was there armed with tools and wheelbarrows. He filled us in on all the awesome things that have been going on at Ealing Transition since we last visited in the summer. Mainly that they are extending their reach in Lammas park, planting more fruit and veg, improving the wild play area (a completely natural garden where children are free to play and learn about nature and plant life)and just generally being cool. We decided that Trevor and grant were honourary goodgymmers for the morning!

The first job was to mulch around a few newly planted trees, so we were straight to work filling the wheelbarrows with mulch and spreading it around...a good full body workout indeed! We then learned about hugelkultur as we mulched around some of the hugel beds were raspberries and blueberries are being grown. We were essentially deadlifting, squatting and doing a lot of ab style work as we speedily mulched the beds!

I also learned about Wangari Maathai, an amazing Kenyan environmental political activist who helped inspire Ealing Transition and is also part of Angels Kenyan tribe..two awesome Kenyan ladies!

And before we knew it we were finished and heading off for another run! This time we did 1 minute on 1 minute off through Walpole Park, past lots of cool dogs wearing very cute little coats. Run-walk training is such a good way to start off or get back into running if you have had a long break.

We were quickly back to bodyline studio and, including all the wheelbarrow walking we had covered 4km!! An amazing morning indeed and an amazing effort Angel, looking forward to seeing you at the GoodGym run this Tuesday!!