MAKING A SPLASH

This week 11 awesome GooGym-ers ran 7km to save Barnet's diving facilities

This was GoodGym Barnet's longest run to-date, covering a total distance of just over 7km. The evening started, as always, with the team gathering at the wonderful Phoenix Cinema. We were joined by GG Barnet newbie Alex, who powered through our toughest run to date. Give her a cheer! This week's task was to collect signatures for the Save Barnet Diving campaign, which is trying to protect the world-class diving facilities at Barnet Copthall. The council is updating Copthall, but the update does not include the brilliant diving, water polo, sub aqua or synchro facilities that currently exist. Once it's gone, athletes will be forced to schlep to Stratford – or give up. You can sign the online petition here to allow campaigners to sit down with the council and discuss the problem.

After a quick warm up focussing on ankle, knee and hip mobility, waking up the muscles and joints needed for a happy run, we set off. Today is three weeks exactly since spraining my ankle, and I'm pleased to report the ankle held up, allowing me to lead the team on the way out, while Freya acted as our trusty back marker. Freya, Damian and Heather helped carry the clipboards, petitions and pens. And the giant bar of chocolate Save Barnet Diving left us and a surprise treat.

Nicola joined me at the front, ensuring we kept up a mighty pace. During this time I discovered that she has some incredibly impressing race times for 10Ks and Half marathons.

We stopped a couple of times along the route for some squats and incline press-ups, focussing on keeping the core engaged. A strong core is incredibly important not only for runners, but in everyday life.

As we hit North Finchley, a man cheered Nicola, Dorian and I on, encouraging us to keep our knees up. I can only imagine he acted as a cheerleader for the rest of the pack as they rolled through, keeping spirits high.

Once we reached Sainsbury's, the group split into teams and spent 20 mins canvassing for signatures. We also may have slyly taken the opportunity to tell the people of North Finchley about GoodGym Barnet

There was some impressive pitches going on, with teams having a good tag-team system. Standing by the doors of Sainsbury's proved to be the most effective. Phil worked the Irish angle well, grabbing the attention of the many Irish people to walk past and making them feel like family. It was a real emotional play.

The team managed to collect 55 signatures in 20 minutes, before packing up and smashing out a very quick but intense strength and conditioning session. We powered through 20 seconds of diamond squats, reverse/forward lunges, then with the opposite leg, and jumping lunges back-to-back, followed by 30 seconds of 180 squat jumps and 30 seconds of prisoner squats. Again, even though each exercise is blasting the quads and glutes, we were focussing on that core engagement – on keeping the chest up and the abs switched on. There were some particularly noteworthy squats coming from Jody.

We then ran back to base to where we had some homemade brownies and biscuits waiting for us courtesy of Hazel in honour of Damian's birthday. Be sure to say thank you and happy birthday respectively. We would have also had a big bar of Cadbury's chocolate, thanks to the folks at Save Barnet Diving, but Heather conviniently ran away with it! The old 'I've got dinner waiting' excuse...

Barnet Biscuit of the week: Hazel's homemade chocolate chip cookies

If you don't already, be sure to click that support button on each other's profiles and get to cheering! We're all going to need as much support as we can get running through winter! I'd recommend also linking your Strava to your profile.

And be sure to sign up for next week's run here. (There's been a change of plan, so stay tuned for that!)

Pennie