Thistle take forever...not if GoodGym Hounslow give it their best shot!

After 2 solid days of rain, there was a rare moment of sunshine over Hounslow for tonight's group run. That possibly had something to do with the fact that celebration was in order - Remy reaching the fantastic milestone of doing her 50th good deed!

We had a quick chat about our upcoming races - for any keen (or wannabe) parkrunners, a load of GoodGym Hounslow runners are planning on attending Gunnersbury Parkrun on May 12th. Hopefully see you there!

Our planned task had been postponed (due to some sneaky Ofsted inspectors taking all the school's attention), so we turned our green fingers to the wild flower meadow on Turnham Green. This is an area organised by Jan, who set us to work last year pulling up thistles to allow room for the flowers to grow. Now they were starting to come back, and GoodGym Hounslow were needed to put them back in their place!

As Turnham Green is so close to our start point, we elected to leave our normal warmup until after the task, to leave us ready for what Ana promised to be a tough (but fun) fitness session! With that, we headed to meet Jan with her wheelbarrow brimming with tools and thick gloves.

Wearing double gloves, working in teams to loosen then pull out thistles, we were soon powering through the task. Thanks to all the recent rain (silver lining!), we had them flying out the ground easily and quickly built a small wall of uprooted prickly leaves. Jan was delighted with our progress, and announced that we'd done a much better job that the workers she had tried employing to do it previously; result!

Before we had a chance to complain of any thistle injuries, we moved swiftly onto our warm up which kept us moving, stretching, and jumping in the air every time Ana said 'Remy' (did she ever say that rule had finished...?). A quick poll round the group revealed the most popular capital city as London (obviously as it's the home of GoodGym), and we set off for a lap of Turnham Green in Indian File.

The start of the fitness session was a tough one, with a round of Sally Squats - an aching 3m30s of squats, squat holds, and wondering what we'd done do annoy this mysterious Sally so much! Eager to get moving and run around the green, we began what probably counts as Ana's most imaginative fitness game, based on two teams competing to turn an assortment of shot glasses scattered across the field a certain way up. It turns out trying to spot clear shot glasses amongst long grass is enough of a challenge in itself - but including the tidy up as a bonus second round saw victory go to the right-way-up team. Good job everyone!

We concluded our fitness session with some technical training, in the way of pyramid interval training. This consists of alternating slow and fast segments, with a focus on technique and increasing then tapering distances. After some excellent sprinting from the whole group, we had the gentle jog back to the Town Hall, followed by the all-important sharing of Remy's 50th celebration cake in the pub. With our masterchef hats on, we decided chocolate and marmalade was Ana's best creation yet - look forward to seeing the recipe!

Don't forget to sign up for more GoodGym run next week!