33 runner ran 5k...and some Primrose Hill Reps to help Butterfly Conservation in Camden

This week's run was a tough one. It wasn't the task- that was nice, helping Camden Butterfly Trust clear a roadside verge to create a butterfly friendly area in Camden. It wasn't the run there and back- which was 1.8k- nothing we haven't done before. It was the fact that Shaun made us run repeated Hill repetitions up and down Primrose Hill! Lovely.

Butterfly habitats on roadside verges

After a short warm up we headed north to a roadside verge between Camden and Primrose Hill. Jim 'the Butterfly man' was waiting there- armed with a wheelbarrow of tools. Jim is working on turning this site into a butterfly and insect friendly zone, and to do this he needs to start planting butterlfy friendly fauna. The ground is rock hard however and needs breaking up. An easy job for 30 GoodGym runners....except we only had 6 or 7 tools for the purpose. We therefore broke into 2 groups- 15 people stayed and worked on the site- weeding with their hands and the tools at our disposal, while the other group headed over the Primrose to work on their Hill running technique....

Up and Down Hill

At Primrose Hill we found a circuit include both an up and down hill stretch. Believe it or not there are good and bad ways to run up and downhill and Shaun attempted to explain how you should adapt the way you run to tackle both challenges. Downhill was particularly interesting- with the advice to fall forward down the hill almost taken too literally! It was knackering- with the final sprint up the climb knocking everyone for 6.

Pick-axe antics

Despite a lack of tools we made great progress on the task- with Pick-axe Peter drawing particularly praise from Jim for his (helpful) destruction of the hard, dried soil! Nice on Peter. We almost cleared the entire plot- we'll be back to finish off next week!

We set off on the way home- taking it easy after our hill exertions making it back to Somers Town tired but satiated from a good evenings work. Nice work everyone.