SOIL, VEG & TEMPO

9 GoodGymers made their way 4.0km to help their local community in Newham.

: Wednesday, 26th of August 2015

9 pairs of hands, plenty of top soil and 6 rounds of tempo runs - No monsoon was holding us back this week.

All morning London had been battered with heavy showers, but once again nature was looking out for us in all our lycra glory and the heavens switched off the taps for a while. So we successfully stayed dry...whoop whoop! However the soil we would be shovelling at Mobile Garden City had spent all day soaking up the water and as a result it was trickier than usual to shift due to its extra water weight. But we had a stellar line up so it was fine.

We had the Cornick brothers who for me are a bit like the Brownlee brothers in the triathlon, The C&A duo (Carol & Alice), along with seasoned runner Steph and MGC garden pro Nish. And if that wasn't enough we topped it off with newbies Holly and Angela. Both of whom were well and truly initiated this week with their first GoodGym run and accompanying Good Deed; neither wasted any time in getting dirty with the rest of us. This is the start of something great, I promise.

Gabby who was overseeing us for the evening informed me of the abundance of veg that was currently floating around the garden. The harvest is ready, and there's not enough takers at the mo so as we worked Gabby picked, and later we loaded all the delicious veg into Alice's bag.

FYI Had the said bag not have been at our disposal the impending tempo session would have turned into a 9 man vegetable relay around the park. And a possible earn it, to eat it type of plank challenge.

After shovelling and loading plenty of stodgy top soil into planters along with a bit of planter moving we were ready for our main run. 3 rounds of 2 tempo runs with a gradual pace increase from 60-80%.
Holding your form and picking up the pace when your already fatigued is always a challenge but one that massively helps you to inject some speed in your longer runs and maintain it.

RANDOM FACT I noticed that Nish has been the only runner to join us on every visit to MGC over the past couple of months...insert round of applause. In that time the growth in the garden has been immense, check it out.

Great work as always, I hope to see you on the next one for my final run with the group. We'll throw in a bevy, coffee &/or bite to eat in Westfield post run too (throw out any suggestions).

Kirsty