Carrot vs Beetroot

10 runners glided over to a local community garden to create space for an event, then ran back

Two weeks on the trot with double digits for attendance, YES GG Newham heroes, this is superb stuff. Keep telling your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, cousins, colleague's cousins, cousin's colleagues, that bloke that always sits next to you on an empty bus etc...you get the drift. The more wonderful people we have, the more good we can achieve, together.

After a quick natter in the Aquatics Centre, we did a short warm up to get those heart rates up, followed by some random questions. "Trump or Farage, pick your favourite?" This one seemed to cause quite a lot of inner conflict. Like the bloke that was trapped under a boulder, he either had to saw off his arm, or die of dehydration/starvation. Actually, come to think of it, ours was a bit more extreme.

We made the 1 mile journey over to Mobile Garden City, did you get it on strava? Sign up, sign up. Fortunately the green fingered Gabby was still there, to greet the gang, then roll through a plethora of tasks for our benevolent beasts to plough through, within our 30 min window. That they most certainly did. Jen, Siobhan and Mairead got straight onto plant hydration, life giving. Justin grabbed a wheel-barrow and sharply began to shift bags of compost, rugged. The rest of the guys partook in some serious soil shifting. These tasks seemed to be completed almost as quickly as they had been started. A larger task lay in the backyard, one for the whole team to attack. We were asked to create some space for cars to park and manoeuvre for the upcoming Stomp Festival, a celebration of the harvest, seems a good thing to party about. Do check out the one off mission and sign up here they really need some GoodGym muscle, also sounds pretty cool.

Once all done, we were kindly given some nutritious green, orange and red goodies. Some of us organically decided to eat said food items then and there, uncooked. Some of us copied, in a bid to not feel left out. Some of us regretted this decision.

We said our goodbyes and ran to a small field near the Copper Box Arena. Where we let our competitive juices flow freely. 2 teams, 4 events. Team Carrot vs Team Beetroot, named after our batons, which were all but mutilated by the end of proceedings. 'Twas great fun, I'd like to hear your thoughts on other events for our next event. As a distance runner, I'm only familiar with running, sometimes in circle, sometimes not. I think I may need your creative input.

Next week is the team social, send me ideas and we can decide on somewhere to rehydrate and replenish food stocks, because as always, we will have earned it. Sign up here

Train smart, train happy

B