Cordwainers and Amhurst: A tale of productive fitness

This Monday's run had two task options and as we each chose which destination to go to, the group ended up pretty equally split. One team was going to undertake a 7.5k run up to Amhurst Road for a compost shifting mission and the other team was heading off on a 4k route to a community garden called Cordwainers on Mare Street to dig out a sort of foundation for a shed to be put in place.The Cordwainers team set off at fair pace heading east.  Arriving at Victoria Park, the team turn north across the park and enjoyed a backstreet jog to the destination on Mare Street. This delightful community food growing project is tucked behind the London College of Fashion, residents from the area come together and grow vegetables and herbs, and they needed somewhere to store tools.Runners split to take two jobs - a digging team and a pallet breaking team.  In one of the most dangerous tasks to date, the combination of spades, hammers, crow bars and naily wood planks lasted for 30 minutes before the crew tidied up and set of south back to the Arch.The Amhurst road group ran north up Cambridge Heath Road to the canal, and took a left to cut across to Broadway Market. We headed north through London fields, and continued up Navarino Road and onto Amhurst Road. Not too far from our destination, we paused at a crossing waiting for the green man, and found GG runner Richard arriving to join us on the other side of the road. The pleasingly perfect timing resulted in a veritable flurry of high fives.We arrived at the walled garden after 23 mins of running and took a strict 30 mins to move a deceptively heavy and rooty compost pile from one side of a tree to another. With compost turned and space freed up for building more wooden compost enclosures, we spent our final 3 minutes putting tools away and completing a 60 sec warm up to get our legs back in gear.  We took the same route for the return leg of the run and arrived back at the arch to talk party plans for next week.Enthusiastic thank yous have arrived from both jobs - more examples of how much good can be achieved if we workout on the streets instead of the gym."Thank you so much for a terrific visit last night from the runners. The work was fab, the energy fantastic and the encouragement it gives to me and others working in that space so valuable. As I said last night, I always fall in love again with the garden when you have been because the jobs in it suddenly seem so much doable! Run well and keep in touch."