11 awesome runners ran 3km and helped tidy up the lovely East Finchley Station Community Garden!

I was a GoodGym tourist last night, taking over in the beautiful borough of Barnet! And what a lovely bunch you guys were! Thanks for being so welcoming and patient with me!

We started off with a group photo round the corner while it was still slightly light and before we all broke into a sweat! You're welcome. Then we did a little warm up, which was needed even more than normal since it's so flippin' freezing now! A few high knees, bum kicks and some thunderous fast feet later and we were ready to go!

Longest 100m ever!

The task itself was literally just 100m down the road from our starting point which is fine for Usain Bolt but it wouldn't quite cut it for us. So we did a little loop around the residential streets nearby to bump up the distance. 3km later we were on the route back down to the station to meet the task owner, Roger!

Roger told us a little bit about the station community garden and explained the task at hand - basically taking everything out and giving it a good old tidy up. So naturally a few groups formed: Deepali and her team went over to tackle the garden on the opposite side of the road, the boys were on litter duty whilst Hazel and the rest of the girls got stuck in taking out the weeds!

The garden was getting clearer by the minute - we could even now see the "Community Garden" sign! After half an hour, we'd filled a few bin bags with litter, chopped down all the big thick plants and cleared the front beds of all the weeds! AMAZING!

A final little tidy up and we said our goodbyes. Off to do the fitness session! We went across the road and found a quiet carpark behind a nursery which was really well lit so it was as good a place as any! We did two rounds of tabata - this is basically a form of high intensity interval training where you work for 20 seconds as hard as you can then have 10 seconds rest and then repeat the whole thing 8 times, so it lasts 4 minutes in total! Most of the exercises last night were great for your glutes!! And as I mentioned, strong glutes as a runner means your alignment is likely to be better so your knees don't knock together etc and you're able to hold a better running form for longer thus making you faster! Anyway after two rounds I think these guys earned a stretch!

Barnet biscuits!

After a nice stretch, we walked back to the cinema to grab our stuff and Hazel had kindly brought along some Barnet biscuits! I absolutely love this idea and am going to steal it for Greenwich... maybe I will call it Greenwich goodies!

Thanks so much for all your hard work last night everyone and for helping me out with the local area! You did amazing and it was so lovely to meet you all. If you ever find yourself in South East London on a Wednesday evening then come along to Greenwich GG and say hi! Otherwise hopefully I will see some of you at a GoodGym social soon x