Toy Story

Fourteen Hackney Goodgymers run 4K to help St Luke's Church set up, sort out and sand down. On a beautiful January evenening GoodGym Hackney was in full swing on the first of our winter indoor tasks 👍🏽. After meeting at the Bakehouse and getting aquatinted with some amazing GoodGym first timers, we heard about the amazing feats of the Hackney crew putting the the pedal to the metal this week and zooming 💨💨 to a fantastic 534k and 49 GoodDeeds so far in the GoodGym January Challenge. Remember to keep on recording those runs and Good deeds even if you are crazy enough to break your watch! We need everyone to reach the overall GoodGym target and also our Hackney target of 1000k and 100 Good deeds so run long and do good this week 🏃🏼🏃🏽🏃🏻🏃🏾.

We set off in search of our new warm up area and it didn't disappoint, thanks to Google maps we have discovered a flat, bright and covered warm up and drills area just outside of the Hackney council offices (if you are ever late you know where we will be). To to really road test the new area we go going with a series of drills and skills to focus us on producing the most power 🏋🏼🏋🏼 so we can propell ourselves onto to some fantastic PB's and the upcoming Victoria Park 10k. We drove our knees up to 90 degrees we dorsi flexed our feet and as speed is nothing with out control we balanced on one leg with military precision. With this fine tuning to our already honed running techniques we left scorch marks on the pavement with a series of searing change of pace intervals.

We made the short run to St Luke's with expert navigation up front by Hackney Coach run rep Kev to meet Keli who had a quartet of tasks for us to attack! Upstairs we cleared plates, box's and anything else we could see to make additional seating space, Antonia was not happy only doing this she turned into the spider detective 🕷🕷 to protect the team from our eight legged friends. Downstairs precision chair arrangement was in order as geometry skills were to the for as we followed the pictures to transform the church into an amazing play area for the most exciting toddler group in Hackney. While the chairs were being arranged the toys were being brought in at a great pace! Every toy ever invented came in and from the sheds outside to make a race track, building site, story corner and craft studio. Out the back first timer Scott and returning GoodGymer Jack got seriously stuck in sanding and scraping the walls of the toilets in preparation for an upcoming repaint.

Soon after 40 minutes of furious activity and a minute or two road testing the toys we had completed our tasks. After a big thank you from Keli we headed over to work our magic on Stair Mountain where we used our high knee power to powerfully bounce up the 12 flights of stairs then do punishing short stair sprints in pairs. As I offered mercy this didn't seem enough for Hackney's finest who begged for a mini circuit to finish! So begrudgingly I agreed 😜😜 and sets of tricep dips, modified press ups and alternating lunges were being pumped out at an impressive rate. With amazing postural technique being shown we finished off with a super charged leg blast with eccentric squats, pulse lunges to get us fit and strong 💪🏽💪🏻💪🏾 for adventures ahead.

A warm down run back to base followed by a series of stretches finished off a fun and rewarding evening.

Great job Team Hackney!!!

Next week we start the preparations for the amazing Re:Generation festival at the Hive. I have seen it at we have an epic task ahead so please sign up to help make this social enterprise, community integration festival great!!!

Keep it smooth

Joel