Five alive

A handful of hearty GG Newham runners took to the pavements of Stratford this week to do our bit at Urban Wilderness.

We welcomed Justin to his first GoodGym conquest and set off on our 3.5k journey into Plaistow. True multitasking skills get put to the test here from the get go. The Westfield route is a tough one that shamelessly separates the timid from the brave. Fortunately for us, we were all brave and made it through in one piece: no prams, shopping bags or unaware, diagonal walking pedestrians were getting in our way.

Interrupted only by a few crossings we made it to the Community Garden, greeted by Jacquie and co. The garden is taking shape nicely as they have been lucky to have a lot more help lately which meant our weeding job was upgraded to weeding and sand shifting. It all became a bit reminiscent of a triple jump comp for me BONUS, anymore time there and I would've jumped.

It was at this point I crept away with one of the residents who grows some produce in the garden; he kindly took me over to his patch and uprooted 5 radishes to give to the group....yeah, we'll come back to that.

Wheelbarrows and heavy duty bags loaded up the five of us began moving the sand from one end of the garden to the other, we unloaded it and raked it out ready for some paving to go down. We made light work of this and so it was onto the weeding, it became speed weeding with just 10mins left on the clock. Several piles of waste later and we were done, with not a single nettle sting might I add.

We packed up, radishes included, and t was then that I uttered words similar to this....

'Remind me to give you all a radish'

....of course once 20mins of intervals had gone by we were back in the park and no one remembered. Post run stretching with stunning sunset views of the park meant radishes went to the back of all our minds. Oops!!

Great work as always everyone, same time next week. As always, remember to spread the word and bring a friend.

Kirsty