Aid of Spades! (the aid of spades, the aid of spades)

26 runners met at Vivo Gym last Tuesday for a bit of action down on the farm - Windmill Hill City Farm that is.

We headed off for the short run to Windmill Hill and were greeted by Chris, who is responsible for their project to transform a car park in to a garden. It's come along such a lot since our first run there; the flower beds are almost built and as a result it was our job to start to move about 120 tonnes of topsoil from the various mounds around the site to the beds and make them lovely and flat, ready for plants.

A wealth of tools awaited us - shovels, spades, forks, rakes and wheelbarrows. It was a GoodGym dream! We gloved up and set to work, various teams shifting the soil, others using their forks and spades to get any lurking lumps out, and barrow masters and mistresses racing around the site with their earthy burdens. Lastly the rakers got in touch with their inner zen and like a feng shui garden raked the soil flat.

After the allotted 30 minutes, the main flower bed looked almost complete but there was one thing we had to do - compact the soil a bit. This was an ideal time for a few sprint drills! The team jogged about a little, warming back up and then did several 10 second bursts of on the spot sprinting. They moved around a bit, chose a new spot, sprinted again, and again and again; afterwards the soil was a lot more compact and flatter, thanks to the leg power of GoodGym!

As the run there was short, the run back was a tiny bit longer and we ended up in the leafy embrace of Queens Square for a cool down and stretch.

Big thanks to Ana for coming up with the name for the run!