It was a cold and rainy night, but an impressive eight GoodGymers turned up at Coffee is My Cup of Tea for the Tuesday night run. We set off for a new Growing Communities project in Stoke Newington, a comfortable two miles away. As the weather was so awful we decided speed would be the focus of the evening; we would blitz the runs and the task and get home to the dry and the warm as soon as possible.

"the weather was so awful we decided speed would be the focus of the evening; we would blitz the runs and the task"

We found the Growing Communities garden tucked behind some shops on Stoke Newington High Street. The site had previously been full of junk and was a magnet for anti-social behaviour, but a dedicated team including Sean & Sarah who met us last night have cleared all the rubbish to make way for a food garden which will provide vegetables for the Growing Communities veg box scheme. The scheme provides fresh, affordable vegetables to many low income families in the area and relies Growing Communities being able to make use of wasteland like this & turn it into something more productive.

"tonnes of low grade concrete"

Now the rubbish has been cleared they are facing the daunting task of removing tonnes of low grade concrete which they discovered as they removed the paving slabs that previously covered the site. The skip is coming soon to dispose of it all so our challenge was to bag up as much as possible to make transporting it to the skip easier. We made fantastic progress with 20 minutes really hard graft. We almost cleared 'The Pit' of it's rubble and made a good dent on the rest of the garden too, we should have counted how many bags we filled because there was a serious pile by the time we left.

"We kept up the pace and consistently hit around a 5min/kilometre pace the whole way home"

We said our farewells, or actually 'see you next week's, and set off again to London Fields as the rain got heavier. We kept up the pace and consistently hit around a 5min/kilometre pace the whole way home, which might explain why my legs are so stiff this morning.

Lauren Garland