Twenty fighting fit Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to the Wilton Estate community garden to remove millions of shrubs, thousands of roots and turn over tonnes of soil.

On a beautiful clear full moon🌝🌝 lite evening we mixed things up a bit at GoodGym Hackney! As for one more week only we had access to the enchanting Disco Lights Running track in Victoria Park. So we were a little naughty and ran away from the task mobilising all the vital body parts on the way with a military style in line warm up. Side skipping, toe touching, walking lunging and even a few football heading ⚽️⚽️ got our bodies primed to throw down some speedily smooth accelerations down under the pulsating neon lights. Alternating power strength moves 💪🏾💪🏽 with balanced and coordinated technique drills our accelerations were silky smooth and Powerfully fast 🏃🏿🏃🏽🏃🏻🏃. 8 bursts of lighting speed⚡️⚡️ followed by a mini lungeathon to build on last weeks strength effort gave us a blood pumping start to the session.

As we were a little late we sent of 9 super speedy shrub excavation ninjas ahead to get started on the task, brilliantly lead by Kev (also Hackney Coach runner rep) the pack laid down a 2k burst at a scorching 7:30 per mile pace!! The sexy group made some strong running progress in pursuit, lots of running improvements shown with talk of wanting to do longer runs in lead up to the fantastic Hackney Half marathon. Special mention to GoodGym Hall of Famer Becky for expertly guiding a few GoodGym newbies on their first run. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

The speedy crew got down to business speedily as you would expect, uprooting shrubs, roots and anything else that got in their path to clear a huge flower bed in 20 hectic minutes of action! 🌳🌳 Looking for more work to be done they moved on to forking, shoving, Pickaxeing metre after metre of flower bed to prepar it for some beautiful wild flower planting 🌾🌼🌾. In 10 quick minutes the entire first section had been forked to death and ready to get flowery very soon. The sexy crew were busy getting tangled in ivy, battling roots and ripping out more shrubs to clear a 15 metre stretch of densely vegetated flower bed ready to become a beautiful and maybe tasty raspberry patch 🍓🍓🍓(near enough a raspberry). Becky was very unimpressed by my lack of Joni Mitchell hair knowledge!! So for anyone else who needed a pictorial reminded of how amazing Joni Mitchell's hair is click here Sorry Becky for my ignorance. A few epic root battles were had and after some brilliant team work the dream worked and after 30 minutes of action not a root was left or ivy steam to be found. Brilliant work team 👏🏻👏🏽👏🏾

After a massive thank you for brilliantly patient Debbie and Lisa we headed back the 1k to base basking in our task glory. After a stretch out we congratulated each other on a fun and fitness filled evening which greatly aided the wonderful Wilton Estate community garden.

If any woman would like to join in with a disco light running group this week check out the info here.

Next week we will be back to The Hive for another adventure in the most eclectic building in Hackney! Please sign up here it will be great fun and we will be running a few relays around De Beauvoir square for good measure!

Don't forget we will be going for a bite to eat after next weeks session if you fancy a bit for nutritional reward for your physical endeavours.

Until next week

Smoothly accelerate

Joel

More to follow

15 Hackney GoodGymers ran 6k to the wonderful Gascoyne Estate community garden to fill raised beds, move a mountain of wood and create an emergency fire truck access for the neighboring day nursary.

Lovely to see a GG newbie starting out on the road to Goodness, as well as a few returning Team Hackney members who we have missed for a few weeks and our beautiful regular runners repping hard as usual.

We had a new lead runner this evening Clare who did a great job of shepparding us through the main, the back and side streets to our warm up area and then around to the task. Well done Clare hope to see you back leading the tribe very very soon! 👏🏻👏🏽👏🏾

We had a warm up with a difference this week, continuing on our strength phase of training we wanted to really toughen up are key running muscles in our core and lower limbs. So inspired by the NBA all star game I went oldskool and back to my basketball coaching days 🏀🏀🏀, getting into a half squat we did the line drill moving in every direction possible, grabbing rebounds, diving to get loose balls on the floor and working those fast feet all in a half squat and with our hands defending the passing lanes. Obviously this was not enough for the now legs of steal ⛓⛓⛓ Team Hackney so the Team begged for more and we jumped into a Lungeathon where we lunged in every direction continuously for a minute with a controlled eccentric calf raises as an active recovery then repeated 💪🏼💪🏻💪🏾 We knew the legs had taken some punishment as the first few strides of the run to the task there was in unison a collective grown!

We ran the 2.5k to the task to meet Varda, and we set to work uncovering the raised beds by removing wooden palettes and rocks which help to keep the foxes out. We then started shovelling mounds of soil to top up the beds, we were going so hard at it the wheelbarrow couldn't keep up and decided to go into early retirement. But on we charged, filling up 15 flower beds with soil. Then we employed the devastatingly efficient Daisy Chain 🌼🌼🌼 to move tones of wood to make make a perfect insect habitat. The insects are vital for the health of the garden and the new log habitat will give many insects a nice new home. 🐛🐌🐞🐜🕷🐝.

It was all hands on deck for the final phase of the task where we cleared a direct path for a fire entrance to a neighboring children's nursary by separating a huge mound of wood chip and soil then freeing up a perfect path to the fire entrance. 🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒

In 40 minutes of fun filled, super productive action we had showed how great Team Hackney are and Varda and the rest of the Gascoyne Estate community garden team were extremely greatful. Everyone is super excited to get more great work down on a Tuesday evening very soon on the Gascoyne Estate.

We headed back towards base aiming for a 2k steady run after our earlier leg exploits but out the corner of our eyes we saw something too intising to ignore. Victoria Park had a special preview of their night running track so we nipped in and had a sped out and back on the amazing pschyodelicly lite up track to add another 1.5k to the run. There will be structured running groups running in Viccy Park for the next few days, check info. We will try and return next Tuesday to have another go!

Hope to see you all next week when we return to Wilton Estate for some serious cutting action!! Please sign up here.

Until next week

Lunge smooth

Joel

Great to get stuck right into a new task tonight! Showed how we roll b