5 lovely ladies ran 4km to sweep & bag up leaves at the Silver Birches care home!

Well what a pleasure it was to cover in Richmond last night! I was a little nervous for our bag drop situation due to the fire alarm in Wholefoods going off for half an hour and everyone being evacuated! Firemen came and everything ,although sadly for these ladies, none of them fit the fireman stereotype! It was unclear whether there was an actual fire or if the smoke was just coming from the vaping youths nearby but either way, luckily the alarm stopped and we were allowed back in... just in time! We dropped the bags and set off on a little warm up jog.

Winter is here

It was dark pretty much as soon as we left. Ellie was very well prepared and armed with a head torch! Nice one! Silver Birches care home is only a stones throw from the starting location so we did a bigger loop to bulk the run out a little bit. After 10-15 mins or so we had arrived!

So there were 5 of us altogether and coincidentally also 5 brooms - perfect!! We had a pre-sweep photo, brooms in hand of course, and then the ladies cracked on. The driveway was pretty long with leaves lining both sides so there was lots to be done, but these girls meant business! Piles were forming left right and centre and the bin bags were filling up fast! Must have been all that talk about Bake Off making you hungry and wanting to work faster to get home and eat something.. or maybe that was just me!

After 30 minutes we had filled 5+ big bin liners full of leaves and the drive was so clean and tidy! We put the bags out by the bins, put the brooms away and made our way to Richmond Green where we did our fitness session!

Tabata!

Tabata is a form of high intensity training and is basically 8 sets of 20 seconds work and 10 seconds rest, so it lasts 4 minutes in total. We alternated between two exercises - squat jumps (great for engaging the glutes and strong glutes help keep good alignment when running) and mountain climbers (these really engage the core and a strong core enables you to hold better running form for longer!). Both of these are killer, especially those squat jumps, they really burn! But you guys smashed it!! 4 minutes of pain and then a nice quick sprint finish to the end and that was it!!

Aaaand stretch!

We finished off by a nice relaxing stretch back at base camp and then it was time to part ways!

Thanks so much for all your hard work last night ladies! Great running! It was lovely to meet you all, and if you are ever in South East London on a Wednesday evening then come visit me in Greenwich!

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