Tonight we ran around 5km to help shift soil in Addsicombe Rail Park’s Community Garden

The rain was threatening earlier in the day so I was worried fewer runners might turn up but in the end we had two unexpected runners join us and the weather was perfect for running and working We headed off to Addiscombe Rail Park which is a long linear park built along an old railway branch line. We almost ran past the entrance to the Community Garden as it was hidden neatly behind some hedges – in fact we’ve run through this park a number of times and never spotted it. The task for tonight was to line and fill four large containers with soil so they could be planted at a later date. Three wheel barrows, one large container, 10 spades and the promise of cake helped galvanise us into action and we made pretty short work of the job and even shorter work of the delicious homemade banana and chocolate chip loaf. I think most of us had more than one piece and I suspect a few went back for thirds – it was so tasty it would have been rude not to!

Task completed and some follow-up dates for later in the summer organised and we headed off for our fitness session. I’ve almost given up trying to stop the group racing so tonight I just split them into teams and had a relay race along a quiet street but to make sure nobody cooled down too much the others had to do a series of exercise before they had their chance to run – press-ups, running man, lunges, squats to name a few. Just as they thought they’d finished we also held some squats against the wall and then did some high knee running on the sport. They did do well tonight!

We headed back to cool-down and had a chat about the upcoming London-wide social at the Bedford Arms this Thursday and the GoodGym Olympics in June. Also coming up are the two Starter sessions on Saturday 13th of May and Saturday 20th of May.

Next week we will be heading back to Thornton Heath Rec to plant some seedlings in the planters we filled a couple of month ago by the light of our head torches on Valentine’s Night.