16 chilly Tower Hamlets GoodGym-ers braved a cold Monday evening and headed out to Bancroft Estate for a gardening task.

After a quick jog to the estate we were given a warm welcome and provided with an exciting trolley full of tools of varying degrees of danger and peril, including spades, hoes, forks and a lone saw (which would prove very handy in the hour to come).

After being taken to 3 innocent-looking flower beds we were given the task of turning over the soil and digging up the roots which would allow them to plant bulbs and vegetables for next year. All sounded reasonably straightforward, and you could see Tom’s eyes light up at the prospect of finishing with plenty of time in which to inflict some interval training on us afterwards.

We hadn’t contended for the Evil-Tentacled-Roots-of-Doom however. These monsters were well and truly embedded deep into the solid ground, but refusing to be defeated we em-bark-ed upon hacking away at them with typical GoodGym b-root force and determination. For a while it looked like the monsters of the deep earth would refuse to be shifted and we were going to be stump-ed. However, we finally got to the root of the problem and eventually sounds of root-conquering cries started to fill the air, accompanied by gnarly root trophies being brandished aloft. We unearthed the last deeply-embedded stump at around 8.25pm, and exhausted but victorious we stood back to admire the f-roots of our labour.

Not for long though, as Tom twig-ged that we’d be able to squeeze in at least a couple of intervals before calling it a day, so leave-ing the estate we quickly headed back, branch-ing off en-roote to do a few quick sprints and drills to give Tom his pain-inflicting fix.

We got this great feedback from the guys at the estate -

"They were absolutely brilliant, they did more than we expected. Thank you.”

Sarah