Thirty One yes 31 Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to shovel tonnes of compost at the Rhodes Estate Food Growers group and clean the outdoor play equipment at Gillett Square.

On a fresh and breezy Hackney Evening Team Hackney were out in force! A new GoodGym attendance PB for me of 31, what an awesome turn out well played 👏🏽👏🏾👏🏻👏🏼👏🏿.

It was a very special evening as we had some double task action and some amazing visitors from the wonderful athlete connecting platform of Strava.

We took to the streets Lead by Clare on mass heading towards the beautifully lite warm up area by the Hackney Council offices, where we got to work mobilising those key running joints with a series activation drills to get us nice a warm and ready for the fun ahead! After some brilliantly balanced hip circles and leg swings we got into Hokey Cokey formation and Lunged Squatted, hopped and Jumped towards and away from each other.

With our legs pumping after some big time jumping we were lead through H-Town by another of the brilliant Hackney TaskForce team Cecilia who navigated the Squad just over 2k to our tasks in Dalston. We dropped of King Kev's compost crew for their task in Rhodes Estate Food Growers Group Before turning the corner into the Urban Amphitheatre that is Gillett Square.

We were met by Clarrisa who was excited to have Team Hackney along for the first time! We got straight to work splitting into 2 teams, the bulk of us unloading the colourful oversized outdoor play equipment from a huge shipping container. While 4 arty types began to restore the information board by cleaning and painting it, taking extra special care of the intricate lettering. The play equipment came out quick while there were a few bucket filling sprints to bring over the warm soapy water and cleaning kit. We got to work systematically cleaning the array of play equipment giving the weird and wonderful shaped apparatus names as we went, the "Cones" proved to create the most varied assortment of names (let's leave it at that). With photographer Kate clicking away to get some great snaps we got into a production line, cleaning and re loading the equipment back into the container at speed ⚡️⚡️🔥🔥. With the notice board re painted and looking gleaming in white a last push saw the equipment stashed away. 35 minutes of epic action and top job done by all!

Meanwhile the Compost crew were hard at work! Kev and the guys shovelling like crazy filling a big transit van fun of compost at a astounding rate!! 15 minutes of speed shovelling saw the van filled to the brim! Then came the glitch in the plan!! As the van drove around to the other side of the estate there was a Dalston traffic jam to contend with!! The Compost crew made up the time and even had to shovel the compost right to the back of the raised beds to add to the difficulty. To dominate a tough task in record time! A little late for the laps Kev lead the guys on a speedy 3k loop back to base to round off the evening!! ...

After a heartfelt thank you from Clarrissa we were again lead by Clare down to the World Famous De Beauvoir Track for Four of the hottest laps in town 🏃🏿🏃🏃🏽🏃🏻. In pairs we hammed a first lap with Walking Lunges thrown in then two tempo paced laps broken up by Tuck Jumps and Jump Squats before we High Skipped into a Max Power final lap which saw some Top quality effort and performance 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾👏🏿.

We then ran the 2k back to base including a final sprint finish to round of an excellent evening of GoodGym action!!

After few static stretches and huge round of applause for some top quality effort we headed home for a well earned feed.

Next week sees the Last GG Hackney Dance of King Kev before he leaves us for pastures new in the West Country. Please sign up hereand come along next week to rip up a barbershop Floor (as you do!) afterwards we will after much debate be heading to the Weathspoons on Mare Street for a Drink and Food to see Kev off in style. See you there!!

Powerfully Smooth

Joel

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