"Dig-Fest" & "Where's Kenton?"

Two teams ran two routes to two tasks.  Two different blog writers write:"Dig-Fest" by Pete Dyson:A sprightly jog to Spitalfields Farm got our six person team thoroughly warm for the task ahead. Trench digging to create a covered walkway for the farm was our mission and the super friendly project lead, Richard, was on hand to brief, encourage and tweet us along the way.With patches of tough ground calling for the pick axe it soon became a epic battle of 'Man, Mattock and Mud'. A film interpretation is surely already in the pipeline; Tarantino to direct.With the upper body fully exercised and the round things off, the jog back featured regular bouts of speed work - all coordinated by drill master Mark. A classic Monday evening. "Where's Kenton?" by Alison Harvie:Led by the legendary Ade “no one gets left behind” Aboaba a troop of nine of us set off on a slightly longer run – 3k there, 3k back and a small bout of lifting in between.It didn’t bode hugely well at the start that we couldn’t even count to the requsite nine, let alone remember our own names to shout out, but thankfully we still managed to keep one foot in front of the other and soon settled in to a steady run through an empty wintry Victoria Park and out towards Hackney Wick and the Cre8 space.In this converted old Public Baths we found Kenton, sports coordinator there, who we trailed outside to a nice grassed garden area roughly the size of a tennis court.  An area that was not going to stay grassed for long it turns out.  They want to build an arc* community centre there but in order to start building they need to clear away the thick rubber matting lying between the grass and the soil.  Kenton made it look simple but I’m pretty sure he had the strength of ten bears as it took at least three of us to wrench each section of rubber matting away from the soil and then twist, jump on and pull it until it came away from the rest.Work was slow at first and Kenton hung around in a slightly nervous fashion - I think utterly unconvinced we could manage this – but soon we got into the swing of things and soon Kenton was asking if we fancied joining his ladies’ football team.We set ourselves the challenge of uprooting enough sections of rubber matting that they would add up to the height of at least two Kentons and spent a good 40 mins attacking the garden with spades, pick axes and sheer brute strength.Sadly we couldn’t find Kenton when we came to leave so instead here’s a photo of Jill, easily the tallest member of our troop, next to all the matting we managed to uproot.*I’m pretty sure he said arc – but when I made a joke about expecting any serious floods he just laughed nervously.