On Monday night 17 runners headed down to Stepney City Farm from the Town Hall Hotel. A nice mix of first with GoodGym runners, first time Tower Hamlets runners and familiar faces made the 2km run down to the farm where we met Simon and a collection of goats, pigs and ducks.

We split into two teams, one to start on the huge pile of compost that had built up since our last visit, the other to empty a pond. With loads to do we stayed on site for early 50 minutes, slightly curtailing our run home, but with the satisfied knowledge of a task well done.

We then split into 3 groups to head back to base with the help of Bryon, Andrew and Alison via different routes, at different paces.

Until next time!

On a light bright Spring evening 21 Hackney GoodGymers ran 4K to the Wilton Estate community garden to perform a variety of physical jobs in the wonderful community garden.

We began the evening with an impromptu task at the E5 Bakehouse with the whole crew ripping and shredding the mountain of cardboard at the Bakehouse to help create a compost pile. A strongly therapeutic task that everyone got involved with and a couple bin bags full of ripped cardboard later the Bakehouse staff were really happy with our efforts.

We then welcomed to the Team some happy new runners for their maiden GoodGym Group run, a nicer evening they could not have chosen. A short pulse raiser to the amphitheatre that is the GG Hackney warm-up area where we congratulated Patrick of a year of monumental GoodGyming, a staggering 183 Good Deeds in 366 days!!! a staggering effort 👏🏻👏🏿👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾. With Hackney Half only a few days away there were many slightly nervous runners preparing for there last few runs before the race. So we got their legs turning over with 4 laps of the Wilton Estate priming everyone's legs with changes of pace between Easy, Race Pace (smooth) and Hard Effort. With the Team well worked out it was time to get to so serious gardening business on the every expanding community garden. We split into 5 pods and got to work weeding, pruning, hoeing, slab laying, water butt building and filling.

With DJ Pat on the decks there was a great vibe on the estate and was really nice to see a few of the estate's residents and their children coming out to join us for a hardworking 40 minutes of gardening action!!

With time ticking we picked up the pace and dominated all the jobs, a small issue with wild Poppygate quickly resolved and an epic Water Butt relay fill from Jack and James it was time to pack away the tools and get ready for some epic Cone Game Action!!

Patrick led the cone action splitting the crew into 3 colour-coded teams. The action was intense and the effort levels were high. A huge shift was put in by all and after a very close sprint relay and a dominant performance in Coney McConeFace Team White were victorious!!

A short warm down run back to base and an in-depth chat about the Hackney Half tactics, preparation and execution saw us on our way home with a really great evening's Running Fun in the bag!

Be great to see as many people as possible on Sunday for Hackney Half whether you're out running, volunteering or spectating come and join the whole GoodGym family for a refuel. All the information on what is going on is here.

Go well on Sunday everyone, trust your abilities and your training! Be positive and give the race your all! Really am looking forward to hearing about all your race stories on Sunday and next Tuesday. Tweet @GGHackney to let everyone know how you went and any pictures.

Next Week we are at the HUG garden for some Williow tunnel landscaping action please Sign up here. As is tradition for me we celebrate our races so we will be heading out to grab a bite to eat and a drink or two post run. Please join us for a bit or a lot of it we would love to have you along.

Until Sunday

Smooth Sleeping, Eating and hydrating

Joel

Twenty Four sensational Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k plus 5 laps of De Beauvoir Square to both shovel 10 tonnes of compost and lift shift and order a lot of wood.

On a windy night in H- Town team Hackney were out in Mega Force 💨💨💪🏽💪🏻💪🏾💨💨 to help make Hackney a nicer place to be while getting seriously fit along the way. We got our pulses raised with a short jog to our usual sheltered purpose built (well I like to think) warm up area. Then we began with a dynamic warm up to prepare the body for the energetic endeavours ahead before we started a new phase of our physical preparation with a series of Plyometric drills to increase Power, Strength and improve running Economy. We bounced, tuck jumped, jump squatted and jump lunged our way to Plyometric success before we split into two groups to take on this weeks Double Bouble tasks.

Seven fearless Runners set off to the Food Growers Group in Dalston lead by the superb Kev. Big question is will Kev make it to 100 Good Deeds before he leaves us for Bristol at the end of the month??? Just 4 Good Deeds needed!! Cheer Kev on to his Century of Good!! Here is what Kev had to say about the compost task:

Meanwhile a compost-hungry splinter cell of seven diggers dashed over to Dalston to assist Alex from The Food Growers Group shifting some compost out of the way of residents’ car parking spaces, it having been dropped by the council for use by local gardeners earlier this week. Eager to put their backs and cores to work to the familiar sound of spade-on-London-tarmac the group worked efficiently to 'find the line' while basking in the warming compost steam. Someone even speculated as to whether the emissions might be good for your skin, though the jury remains out on that one. Alex has a tonne of jobs lined up for a full crew and hopes to get us booked in for another visit soon. GGHackney’s gardening skills are in high demand these days!

Thanks Kev! We have another Double task in a couple of weeks with Alex and The Food Growers crew so look out for that one to.

While the bulk of the Team brilliantly lead to the task by Clare to the Hive where we were met by the usual array our alternative activities only found at The Hive. We bolted up to the top floor and began lifting, shifting and eventually sorting hundreds of pieces of wood. We got into the patented Daisy Chain to increase the wood movement pace and got stuck in! Then the call came as help was needed in the garden so 4 brave runners ran down to make pictured Totem poles from a series of tyres. The wood was sorted and moved created space for work to continue on the radio station, a last minute mission to pick up a door languishing on the 1st floor was complete before we set off on our way with a job well done.

We met up with the Compost crew at the beautiful De Beauvoir square, where they have kindly laid a perfect running oval primed for some lapping action! Building on the Plyometric techniques from the warm up we worked in pods of 3 bouncing, tuck jumping, lunge jumping and fast feeting between burning up the track with varying length tempo sprints around the track! ⚡️⚡️🔥🔥🏃🏃🏽🏃🏿🏃🏻🔥🔥⚡️⚡️. After a 5th and final all out lap the Team had produced a monumental running effort well played everyone 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾. We had the small matter of a 2k cool down to contented with which was super safely lead by Cecelia.

We stretched out and congratulated each other on a top fitness effort before 13 of us attempted to get our Pizza 🍕🍕🍕🍕 fill at the local Pizzaria. Unfortunately after a long wait only 9 made it (next time we are going to the pub!). But great to see so many runners growing the Team Hackney community even after the run. ##Top GG Hackney Vibes##

Next week we are getting our Green fingers working in Wilton Estate community garden 🍃🌿🌱please sign up here and look forward to seeing you all next week!

Smoothly Jump

Joel