East side Hoe Down

On a light bright Spring evening 21 Hackney GoodGymers ran 4K to the Wilton Estate community garden to perform a variety of physical jobs in the wonderful community garden.

We began the evening with an impromptu task at the E5 Bakehouse with the whole crew ripping and shredding the mountain of cardboard at the Bakehouse to help create a compost pile. A strongly therapeutic task that everyone got involved with and a couple bin bags full of ripped cardboard later the Bakehouse staff were really happy with our efforts.

We then welcomed to the Team some happy new runners for their maiden GoodGym Group run, a nicer evening they could not have chosen. A short pulse raiser to the amphitheatre that is the GG Hackney warm-up area where we congratulated Patrick of a year of monumental GoodGyming, a staggering 183 Good Deeds in 366 days!!! a staggering effort 👏🏻👏🏿👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾. With Hackney Half only a few days away there were many slightly nervous runners preparing for there last few runs before the race. So we got their legs turning over with 4 laps of the Wilton Estate priming everyone's legs with changes of pace between Easy, Race Pace (smooth) and Hard Effort. With the Team well worked out it was time to get to so serious gardening business on the every expanding community garden. We split into 5 pods and got to work weeding, pruning, hoeing, slab laying, water butt building and filling.

With DJ Pat on the decks there was a great vibe on the estate and was really nice to see a few of the estate's residents and their children coming out to join us for a hardworking 40 minutes of gardening action!!

With time ticking we picked up the pace and dominated all the jobs, a small issue with wild Poppygate quickly resolved and an epic Water Butt relay fill from Jack and James it was time to pack away the tools and get ready for some epic Cone Game Action!!

Patrick led the cone action splitting the crew into 3 colour-coded teams. The action was intense and the effort levels were high. A huge shift was put in by all and after a very close sprint relay and a dominant performance in Coney McConeFace Team White were victorious!!

A short warm down run back to base and an in-depth chat about the Hackney Half tactics, preparation and execution saw us on our way home with a really great evening's Running Fun in the bag!

Be great to see as many people as possible on Sunday for Hackney Half whether you're out running, volunteering or spectating come and join the whole GoodGym family for a refuel. All the information on what is going on is here.

Go well on Sunday everyone, trust your abilities and your training! Be positive and give the race your all! Really am looking forward to hearing about all your race stories on Sunday and next Tuesday. Tweet @GGHackney to let everyone know how you went and any pictures.

Next Week we are at the HUG garden for some Williow tunnel landscaping action please Sign up here. As is tradition for me we celebrate our races so we will be heading out to grab a bite to eat and a drink or two post run. Please join us for a bit or a lot of it we would love to have you along.

Until Sunday

Smooth Sleeping, Eating and hydrating

Joel