Tuesday 24th September 2019
Report written by Barnet runner
twenty two ✌️ terrific GoodGymmers gathered at the Phoenix to run to Northway Gardens to help in this brilliant local space.
In what was quite the busy evening, we were joined by: Joanna and Julian for their first good deeds. Welcome! We welcomed Danny who is on the injury comeback trail, and we were joined by our marathon hero Rob who made it through the Norfolk Coastal Marathon at the weekend despite some particular difficulties along the way. Give him a massive cheer!! It was a particularly blustery, rainy, stormy day so kudos to everyone for making it along.
We quickly posed for a group photo with our flag while we had the light, before setting off to Northway Gardens. I led us down there with the dream team of Sally, Fiona and Danny back marking.
It's a 2k run so we dashed along to meet up with Brian. Northway Gardens are a lovely open space completely managed by volunteers so Brian really appreciates our help in doing some of the heavy lifting so the gardens can stay in great shape.
Today's task was: soil. A car full of soil to be precise. Brian had managed to cram 25 bags of Soil Improver into his car so our task was to: transport the soil to the flower beds, open the bags up and spread the soil around the beds. It's pitch dark in the gardens themselves, so we were pleased to have our giant torches with us which we hung from trees to illuminate our work space and we got going. We used wheelbarrows to shift the bags before opening them up and spreading the soil.
We moved so many bags! But as ever, we showed that many hands makes light work as we got through all the bags and spread all the soil with 20 minutes effort. Brian said the same job took him all day on his own the week before. The power of teamwork in action.
After clearing up and saying our goodbyes, we made our way to the tennis courts for our fitness session. With Danny and Rob doing their best floodlight impression (see photo for evidence) we set about running laps. The workout was: two laps easy, two laps medium, two laps easy, two laps hard, two laps easy, two laps hard, followed by squats and calf raises. There was some hard work and some tired faces at the end. Great work team.
From there is was a simple easy run back to cinema for stretches and high fives. Thanks for coming guys. See you next week.
D