If you like piña coladas, and doing weeding again

20 runners ran 3.5km to rip out weeds at the Christchurch Community Garden!

It was another warm summers evening at GoodGym Greenwich. We had 3 lovely new runners join us, Mani, Shelomoh and my probably one of my oldest friends Marina! Great to have you all along with us!

HAPPY PINEAPPLE DAY!!!

It was pineapple day yesterday so we went round and found out everyones favourite fruit, we posed like pineapples in our photos and a few people even went out for some post run piñas! Nice one!!

We did a little warm up and then made our way along the river to Christchurch garden. We were greeted by Kate who had lots of tools and gloves ready for us. And then it was all hands on deck, literally! Everyone took to the floor to yank out as many weeds as possible. Some of them were super stubborn but it was always really satisfying when they came out, roots n all!

After about 20 minutes, we could really notice the difference, patches of weed-free areas were growing bigger and bigger! And the buckets of weeds were filling up rapidly! By 8 o'clock it was time for us to leave. We gave the place a final sweep, had a group pic and then made our way to the park!

Hill repeats!

We had a bit of time to spare so we made the most of it with some hill repeats up One Tree Hill. We had 10 minutes to complete as many ups and downs as possible. There are quite a few steps and you soon feel the burn (I did 25 of these on Tuesday so I know how you guys felt!) but it's a great thing to incorporate into your training to build leg strength and strength endurance which will ultimately make you a faster and stronger runner!

Not sprints!

When you hear about hills you usually hear the term "hill sprints" so you often see people charging up a hill at full speed but that's not what we want to be doing! If you sprint up those hills, you will burn out and be too tired to complete more than a couple of reps, its better to just go up them at a steady speed and then recover on the downhills and do 6-10 reps rather than be completely wrecked by the time you get to the top on the first one!

So give it a go next time you're in the park. Ideally once a week you want to be getting in some kind of session like this is, whether it's hills or intervals and you will see dramatic improvements in your running fitness!

After 10 minutes, we had a nice little jog back to the uni with the sun setting ahead of us. LOVELY!

A little stretch and we were done!

GoodGym Olympics!

A few people asked me yesterday about the GoodGym Olympics, you can find all the info here and while there is no space for any events, it will be great to have as many of you down cheering and helping out as possible! It will be such a fun day with loads to get involved in! Hopefully see you there :)

Great work last night everyone! Well done for getting so stuck and for embracing those hill repeats! See you next time!