29 hot Hackney GoodGymers ran over 8k to a new project for the group a Well Being garden to help service users dealing with diabetes.

A steamy Hackney evening brought out a great turnout to set our PB total distance for a group run.

Leaving the Bakehouse at super speed with Peter leading strong a recce crew up to Stamford Hill. While the rest of the squad kept a strong a consistent tempo over the 4 and a bit Kilometres.

We met Rose who who manages the house to support her service users who are battling with diabetes. We got stuck straight into the overgrown garden cutting, hacking, weeding, digging to great effect!!

Making amazing progress with limited tools, everyone put in a top shift in 40 minutes of non stop action! We had a couple of slight pauses to rehydrate and refuel on some lovely water melon 🍉!

We made great progress and Rose will sort out some more gloves and tools for our next visit in 2 weeks!

This looks like being an amazing project where we can make a huge difference taking an overgrown waste land into a productive space to grown herbs and plants as well as providing garden therapy for the service users.

Leaving in phases so we could tidy and maximise our working and running time.

While Rich and Phil chased us down with some impressive running the Sexy crew kept a solid tempo to finish off a great run. We were soon met by the rest of the speedy runners after a top all round session!!

Be great to have you all along next week when we continue our summer season helping Bruce the Hackney Park Ranger!

Don't forget about the last couple of Fitness 4 All sessions meeting at Bethnal Green tube at 6:45 on Thursday's June.

We (Phil) have started a Hackney WhatsApp group if you would like join it to hear about socials, group run info, races, parkrun get togethers or anything send me your number and I will add you to the group or see Phil next week!!

Talking of next week we are heading out after the group run for a drink!! Be great to have you along!!

Smooth Running

Joel

19 Hackney GoodGymers ran a speedy 4.5k to the Wilton Estate community Garden to dig, cut, plant and water our way to a stunning running victory.

On a night of almost ideal running conditions we were lucky enough to welcome back a few regulars from holidays, 3 amazing GoodGym newbies and an array of GoodGym glitterati.

We started the evening after a pressurised head count and pulse raiser with a series of mobilising dynamic exercises to get our key running muscles and joints ready for action. Once the joints were fully WD40ed up we moved onto some running form drills mixed in with a range of important lower body strength exercises. With our form tight, our core engaged, strength amped up and our running efficiency off the charts we ran 1k to Wilton Estate through the Hackney backstreets.

Arriving we were met by the always amazing Debbie who tooled us up and divided a range of great tasks to help maintain the ever expanding Wilton Estate community garden. With groups cutting back tree suckers, watering entire gardens by watering can and a hose, lifting and repositioning huge wooden planters, filling them with compost, trimming the orchard and finally planting hundreds of bulbs.

The gardens were a buzz of activity with the GoodGym crew flying around get Good done well, completing all the tasks in 35 minutes of top draw action.

A quick tidy up and we were ready to head on our way, but not too far as we explored the Wilton nearly 500 raceway. Lap 1 we got our running legs back under is, Lap to we ran hard along the short sides, Lap 3 we worked hard for half a lap before collecting ourselves for a monumental full lap timed effort on a super speedy Lap 4. A top lung busting effort by everyone and hope that we can see some speed improvements when we go back the the Raceway later in the summer!

A short chilled floaty run back to base followed by a series of static stretches saw us finish off a top notch evening of running fun!

Next week we are off to Bootstrap to lift, shift and team manoeuvre some big barrels. Please sign up here.

As I said in the into be great to have you all along to Hackney Marshes ParkRun on 9th of July to test out our Saturday morning Speed! For all the info and to sign up click here.

Until next week

Smooth Sprinting

Joel

Twenty One inspired Hackney GoodGymers ran 4K to the HUG garden on Hackney downs to dig flower beds, rescue the vandalised Williow tunnel and fill the dug flower beds with soil.

On a warm and muggy evening in H-Town it was great to see so many new GoodGym faces both touring and starting out on their GoodGym adventures. The timing of the session could not have been better as we managed to squeeze the group run into the only dry patch of a drizzly day. There were a number of runners with slightly stiff and sore bodies after everyone's magnificent efforts at Run Hackney Half Marathon on Sunday so we eased our way into the session with some gentle mobilisation work to get us all going and flush out the muscle soreness for those that needed it. A few high fives and a skip and a hop later we were on our way on the 2k run to meet Myra at the HUG garden. We split into 3 groups first got to work returning the Williow tunnel to it's former glory after it had been vandalised at the weekend. April showing some amazing core strength to hold herself in the air while digging a hole. The tunnel was soon back to its former glory after some seriously tough work plunging and bashing a pole into the ground to create the space for the Williow to go back into then some overhead knot mastery to knit the tunnel back together. The second group were busy cutting into the turf and creating 6 more beautiful pieces of landscape art or flower beds. The group worked in 3 pairs with one digging the turf out while the the other runner speedily carrying the turf to create some more landscape art surrounding the Williow tunnel with elevated shapes and a tear drop shaped flourish. The third group had their hand full with a 500kg huge bag of soil! The group got a slick production line of diggers and pushers going. With the diggers piling the soil to the Wheel barrows at a super rate while the pushers charged to fill the beds to the brim then stamped the soil down to get all the air out. Even with a poorly barrow the group stormed ahead and finished filling the beds with time to spare after I final push carrying the whole bag over to dump the last of the soil into the beds.

After 40 minutes of top quality action we had completed our tasks and look forward to returning next week for some more adventures!

We said our goodbyes to Myra and then got stuck into a 10 minute circuit blast with one group running while the second group dominated a series of conditioning upper and lower body exercises then switching when the lead runner returned. Seems like the half marathon has had only a very positive running effect on Clare as she stormed the running section leading her group powerfully back each time.

After the big energy expenditure of the circuit we had chilled 2k run back to base lead brilliantly by Chris B where we rounded the session off with a series of static stretches.

Obviously after monumental efforts of Sunday a celebratory evening out was in order so was great to have 15 of the crew head out to our favourite Tuesday refuelling venue for a well earned feed.

Look forward to seeing you all again next week for another addition of running fun! Please sign up here.

Stay Silky Smooth

Joel

On a beautiful clear Hackney evening 26 Hackney GoodGymers ran 5k to the Food Growers Group to help maintain there garden or 3k to St Luke's Church to deliver flyers.

We started an action packed evening with a supersonic start! With all 26 runners getting mobile with a series of mobilising warm up drills, some hopping and skipping got us prepared to walking lunge and side squat into 5 explosive flying 30 meter sprints with active jogging recovery. With the legs turning over an a scorching rate it was time to split into two groups for the evenings tasks. 19 runners being brilliantly lead by The brilliant Hackney Task Force members Cecilia and Jack who guided the squad to Dalston to meet Joy at the Food Growers Group community garden.

Here is Cecilia's report; After a smooth run over to the Dalston Food Growers site in Crosby Walk, we were met by Joy, who had a list of tasks for the GoodGym team. She asked that a couple of GoodGymers shovel compost in to two wheelbarrows and manoeuvre them to the cafe site in Abbot Street, as many times as possible, in order to fill some wooden planters in readiness for new greens. We walked over to the cafe, where four Goodgymers donned protective suits and got to work painting the internal walls, others rolled metal barrels of soil in to the courtyard around the corner and then a large group got to lifting/ shifting heavy grow-bags of soil up to the roof garden of the Print House. This hefty work initially involved wheels - in the form of a trolley - but then required manual loading in to a lift and carrying up a flight of stairs. The lift could only take so much weight before the automated voice announced that it was "out of order" (!) so it took several goes. A fantastic team effort, Joy was really pleased with the amount achieved in such a short space of time. The roof garden bar officially opens on the 1st of May. Joy invited us to attend the opening event on the 29th April, where you will be able to enjoy a drink while admiring your good work

While all the lifting and shifting was going down in Dalston 7 runners ran down to St Luke's Church to meet Keli and deliver leaflets about an upcoming course to the local residents on the estate surrounding the church. With clinical efficacy up and down stairs over 500 leaflets were delivered in 9 tower blocks over 44 floors in 40 minutes of consistant and sustained letter box stuffing action! 🏃🏽🏃🏃🏿🏃🏻 With some of the most stunning views over London in our memories we headed back to base playing a little loop up and back action to add a bit of distance and speed for those that wanted it. With the two groups meeting up for some cool down stretches and a big round of applause for two very well done tasks we headed on our way into the clear and beautiful night.

Next week we are running back to meet Bruce and his Team at Daubany Fields to finish off our clearance of the park getting it ready for the Parks authorities to regenerate the space in the coming weeks. Please help we keep what little hair I have left and sign up here nice and early if you know you are coming along. Next week we will be having our monthly social visit to a local eating and drinking establishment after the group run, so please come along and have a drink, get some food have a chat.

Until next week

Have a smooth sunshine filled time

Joel

Twenty Two amazing Hackney GoodGymers ran 6k to clear Daubeney Fields of Rumble, Rubbish and other random Fly tipping.

On a Beautiful Spring evening in H-Town Team Hackney were out in Force. We split into two units to help navigate through the streets of Hackney, led perfectley by Hackney task force members Cecilia and Clare.

On one of the longest runs of the year we kept a smooth and steady pace as we discovered a some new parts of Hackney as well as got a reccy in of the first mile of the Hackney Half marathon.

Once we got to Daubeney Fields to meet Bruce The Parks development officer and his team from Hackney Leisure and Green Spaces. We gloved up and got our grabbers, split into 2 pods and attacked everything we could find! We found the weird and wonderful from bones to carpet, fencing to footballs doors to debris and a never ending mountain of rubble!! We also had a treat with DJ Pat in the house spinning some 90's tunes while putting a revolving door of runners through there paces with a quadruple circuit to really work on our physical preparation for running the longer distances in the lead up to our spring races. Patrick had everyone's conditioning really tested in a fun and diverse series of session great job DJ P 💪🏾💪🏼💪🏽

With TLC's Waterfalls blazing on the decks the rubble flowed down to the van at such a rate that the van it begged for mercy from the weight! After 35 minutes of action we beat the darkness coming in to clear all the area of all the very best random rubbish you could imagine and totally fill all the van and buggy, great job team 👏🏾👏🏿👏🏽👏🏻. With the huge thanks from Bruce and his crew we got on our was with the legendary Chase back to Base with a final leg blast for team Speedy at the park the Sexy crew started out on the 3k run home throwing in a few leg blasting exercises along the way but we were no match from a monstrous performance from the Speedy crew lead by Task force member Jack but spearheaded by a super human running performance from Patrick. 🏃🏽🏃🏻🏃🏃🏿

With a few stretches and a huge round of applause for a great Team Hackney group run we said our goodbyes and headed off into the night!!

Next week we are double tasking at The Food Groweres Group in Dalston and Flyering at St Luke's Church please please sign up here for some more fun on a Spring run.especially important on double task weeks so please let me know you are coming!!

Until next week,

Focus, run Smooth and Silky

Joel