Good things come in trees

GoodGym made its mark in Chiswick yesterday by planting a fruit tree and other shrubs for the enjoyment of local residents.

We began the night by welcoming a lovely new runner to the group - put your hands together for Amy who joined us for her very first GoodGym run! We also had a nice bit of GoodGym tourism from Paul and a mile PB from Adam. What a great start to the evening!

With our task within sight of our starting location last night, we did a quick warm up, avoided getting parked on, and discussed which was the greatest national anthem. Great Britain, the US and France all featured, along with Spain (which, we learnt from Luis has no words), South Africa, Fiji, and there was even one hopeful vote for, erm, Jerusalem.

It was hardly worth setting Strava for the (very) short jog over to the patch of land we had started work on a couple of weeks back in the snow, and we soon found local residents Karen and Cheryl waiting for us with tools, gloves and our soon-to-be flourishing plants.

Following instructions, we formed a nice line and began digging away. Unsurprisingly, a competition was quickly established to see who could find the biggest root. Remy took a quick lead and remained in pole position despite strong offerings from Natasha, Ross, Paul and Michelle. But it was Adam who finally unearthed the beast that was to be crowned winner, after very safely testing to see if it was a electricity cable with a few prods of his spade. Check out the pics to see our gallery of contenders.

Next came the great planting, and with careful digging, fertilizing, watering and spading, a community fruit tree found its forever home. It was surrounded by flowering shrubs and other little plants, and we shall watch its progress every week when we run past it.

All that digging was hard work, but that didn't mean we were going to skip our fitness session. So we headed over the road to Turnham Green and warmed back up with a squad sprint around the perimeter. Then we moved on to a tough set of circuits which featured ten stations such as planks, squats, sprints, tricep dips and the dreaded scorpions. Nonetheless, everybody gave it their all - great effort team.

Next week we're off to Kew Bridge to collect plastic bottle on the foreshore for an exciting future project. Until then, have a great week of running and doing good!