Start Spreading the Newsletter

Eight awesome athletes took on stairs, dogs and aggressive letterboxes to spread the word with the Brockley Society newsletter, running 5k in total and smashing some serious hills into the bargain.

This week's task was a little different and involved a hop, skip and a jump around a central part of the Brockley Conservation Area. The Brockley Society newsletter is printed three times a year and delivered to homes and businesses in the conservation area, giving residents news about events, groups, meetings and opportunities to come together and build our community. There is a strong team of volunteers who deliver the newsletter, but sadly, the flats we visited this week often get overlooked.

Maybe all those steps put some people off...but not us!

After gathering at Glass Mill, where we heard about Alex's first weekend mission, we warmed up with a quick game of 'fakey', some drills to engage our glutes for those stairs and a few lunges to encourage that strong upward stride to reach the top-floor flats. On our outward leg, we found that Lewisham Way was slightly less obstacle-heavy than last week and caught up on everyone's news, finding out what people are up to for Easter (hiking around the South Downs - please don't rain - chilling, playing in a band in Germany and, of course, eating chocolate).

On Wickham Road, we made sure everyone had enough newsletters and that we all knew where to go (it's a bit of a maze) and quickly disappeared, leaving Adele to look dodgy on a street corner...doing squats doesn't make you look any less dodgy. Fact. As this leaflet distribution lark is new to us, we didn't really have a clue how long it would take and even if we'd manage to post all the papers, but people were soon gathering and asking for more. So, in less than half an hour, our runners had delivered 270 newsletters to a labyrinth of flats with tree names such as 'May Tree', 'Poplar', 'Holly Bush' and 'Ash'.

Finishing a task in double-quick time doesn't mean you can just saunter off though, it means more time for a good wall-squat and a serious hill session (evil cackle). As we were so close to Hilly Fields, it would have been churlish not to familiarise ourselves with yet another of its lovely hills. Before setting off on an upwards incline, we re-engaged our glutes and quads and focussed a bit on our arm action, with a little drill that helps us feel the strong backward arm drive that will get us up there. To emphasise this, we ran part way with our arms behind our backs and also in the air, comparing the two.

It's most definitely easier to run with your arms engaged!

Now the group formed a line and did some uphill chain running, developing our efforts from last week. It's all very well focussing on the up, but you need to think about your down too, so we looked at a more free, gravity-driven downward run before tackling the hill for one last time to head back to Glass Mill. All those hills would be so much easier with a strong core, so we addressed this too, with some front and side planks to (completely) finish (us) off. Someone (Amy?) mentioned people who can do planks for five minutes and she probably wished she hadn't; the seed has now been planted for some competitive planking, oh yes!