Sergiu Radu

WHAT A TASK we had this week!

It had it all;

• Sledgehammers
• Logs
• Lights
• Hills
• Goats
• Cereal!

We met with the lovely Julie of Heeley City Farm (HCF) who let us into this gem of a place and through the site to the field we would be working in past all of the very cute goats.

HCF have had to have some trees on site felled and the larger logs needed splitting, bagging and shifting so that they can be dried and sold in the future to bring some income into the site which doesn't have any monetary support from the Council and needs to be self sustaining so this was a great way for us to help out.

We got straight to it, splitting.... into smaller teams:

• Log splitters - 'I wanna be... your sledgehammer!'
• Assistant log splitters - putting in the 'grenade' splitters into the logs to get them started
• Log sorters
• Log baggers
• Log movers
• Log shakers (ok, made this one up)
• Goat petters

We certainly expended some energy and shed some timber on this task! It was great to be out in the night air, a great remedy to any splitting headaches...At times it was hard to see the wood from the trees, but in the end we were told we had made up 24 bags which was a great effort!

After finishing we made great use of the well lit traffic free hill outside for some hill reps in teams where we did 4 reps of:

40% 60% 80% 110% (as the Americans say)

We had a steady saunter back before stretching off and making birthday plans (see listings on website).

Until next time, happy running! :)

The nights sure are drawing in and despite lovely sunny eve's when we meet the light is short lived and it's getting to the stage when it is nearing dark when we arrive at our tasks. I actually really like this time of year, when you look back and you can see a long line of head torches dancing up and down and you get that feeling of 'bonus points' when your out running and helping the community in the dark when others are sat at home.

Anyways.... Good thing we've got the GG flood lights on hand to light up the areas we are working on. Thanks to all that have dusted them off from the backs of cupboards etc or even brought their own down, it really does make the eve tasks so much easier and safer, thanks again!

This week we were back to our old friend Parky Rob at Heeley People's Park (HPP) where they have had some comments about overgrowth on some of the pavements of Well Road...

Well, well, well, we can't have that can we. Enter GOOD GYM!

We got tooled up with loopers, saws, seceteurs and ton bags and got to it, cutting back as much as we could to make the pavements of Well Road look spic and span!

Talk within the group varied from the high brow pun generation (credit for the run title) and large stick sawing from James to the cultural impact of the Spice Girls on future generations from Cat, to the degredation of the stadardisation of the size of Twiglets from Ash. We are nothing but varied in our chats at GG!

We filled 3 of the massive ton bags and composted the cuttings before downing tools and heading back to the U-Mix center for some fun fitness, with a split set of upper and lower body exercises using the big steps to vary intensity and effort.

On return to The Showroom, we stretched off and made our orders which included some very impressive orders where Racheal 'risked it for the brisket' and shared some lovely fruity cake!

On another beautiful sunny Sheffield afternoon we met outside The Showroom Cinema and got ready for the off. Our new friend Mohammed jumped in for the group photo before we headed off toward Ship Shape with James as our trusty back marker.

On arrival, unfortunately there wasn't anyone around to greet us and provide us with tools so we had to think on our feet. We did what we could with what we had and got litter picking and weeding what we were certain were weeds! Despite trying Regather down the road to see if there was anything we could do for them quickly it wasn't a goer so we did what we could at Ship Shape, had some excellent photos at the front door and then headed to the U-Mix center for an extended fitness session.

This weeks fitness session involved some paired work with one partner on the the planters doing step up's, step up's squat downs or box jumps, whilst the others did a lap of the area.

Next up we headed down to the climbing frame and again did a couple of paired rounds of dead arm hangs, knee lifts or leg lifts whilst partners did their choice of press ups, using the concrete steps to increase/decrease intensity.

Following a fantastic fitness session we headed home for stretching and refreshments at the Showroom. Hopefully we will be back at Ship Shape again in the future.

So great to start to see some of the old GG faces coming back to group runs and numbers becoming more consistent, long may it continue. We gathered outside The Showroom and headed out to meet MARVELLOUS MARIA at Common Lane Community Garden.

On arrival Maria gave us a marvellous brief on the tasks that needing doing on the Community Garden site and around the Community Centre which included:

• Weeding all around the centre and some of the beds
• Repairing the compost heap with new (old) pallets
• Litter picking around the site
  

We got straight to it, quickly splitting into groups and getting straight on task.

Becky & Lan got down to earth, weeding a corner bed.

Ash kept a level headed repairing the compost heap with Racheal and Abi.

Once time was upon us and we’d downed tools, we went from pallets to planks with a good three rounds of ‘plank and go’ where we paired up heel to heel in the plank position and took turns in our pairs to do sprint laps around the 9 ladies style stone circle before swapping with our partner.

We had a steady jog back with a small STARVA sprint section at the end for those that fancied a challenge and then stretched off before heading inside for some refreshments from The Showroom.