"Woodchip makes the world go round"- James Gilbert

On Sunday morning, 6 Goodgymmers from Camden, Islington and Haringey made fine use of the respite between Storms Eustice and Franklin to join the Friends of CREOS (Crouch End Open Space) for a full morning of forest path building.

John and Area Activator Simon had already completed some marshalling at Priory Park junior parkrun earlier, and met up with the rest of our crew at Hanley Tennis Club Car Park for 10.30am. Following a suggestion from Karen, we prepared a specific pre-task workout session around Shepard's Hill. Our plan was to warm up before engaging in some heavy lifting, wheel barrowing and woodchip shifting!

We started our session with some dynamic drills (ankling, can-cans, high knees, butt kickers, mid lunges, abductor twists), and then lead into an arm swing tutorial in pairs. The emphasis was on the connection between "arm levers", effort and cadence, and how to control this motion for different running paces.

Strides were next on the agenda, covering 100m with a build up to maximum velocity and a wind down afterwards. The final set was a series of 5 x 10 second hill sprints up Montenotte Road slope, with downhill jogging recoveries.

After a thorough workout, we joined the CREOS team to help with maintaining the forest paths between Highgate and Crouch End. Karen and Rachel helped with gathering up fallen debris from the pathways after the storms over the weekend, while Sam joined a digging and shoveling team around a very boggy section of the greenways.

Simon, John, Paul, Karen and Rachel came together to lay down tonnes of donated wood chip across the path nearest to Queens Woods. Paul, Simon and John cleared as much mud as possible from the old surfaces, and then we became a super efficient team for dropping, wheel barrowing and raking the chips across the walk ways. The Friends of CREOS were thrilled with the progress we made within 2 hours of amazing teamwork! We were even gifted a picnic in the carpark afterwards, with some delicious soup and bread on offer for hungry Goodgymmers. Well done, all!