Nine enthusiastic GoodGymers ran 2.5km around AbneyPark Cemetery and shifted 53 Grave head stones while filling 1.5 tones of soil into the sunken common graves.

Meeting at one of London's Magnificent 7 Cemeteries for the first of January's Special Starter Sessions we welcomed 9 GoodGym runners with 6 first timers!! Great to have you all along for the start of hopefully a great GoodGym journey!

After a welcome chat and safety briefing we went on a 1.25km around the park boundary admiring the ancient tombs and paths that GoodGym have helped create in Abney Park last year.

Meeting Park manager Tom we gathered the tools and headed to our action station for the day. Splitting into two teams we had the Grave fillers and the ** head stone shifters**. Both teams burst into action and attacked the tasks in hand!! The fillers got a strong pace and system going, first shovelling the wet and heavy soil into wheelbarrows then running it down to fill in the void left by the ever sinking Common graves!

These common grave sites are also have lined of small headstones which when the grave sinks fall over or sink down. So the second team prized the head stones out of the ground with a huge leveraging pole and carried the headstones up to higher ground so they could be repositioned at a later date. Some huge efforts were needed to manoeuvre the headstones out and the team was up for the challenge!! 53 headstones in all were saved from sinking or falling over!!

After 55 minutes of seriously tough work we packed up the tools and headed out on a recovery 1.25k run around the Cemetery and finished the session with some much needed static stretching.

Great job by everyone and really pleased you all enjoyed the session!! Would be great to see you all again at a group run very soon!!

Here is the link Tuesday's group run with me at Hackney for you to sign up. In a couple of weeks on the 22nd there will be the second Hackney Starter session Sign up here.

See you all soon,

Smooth Running

Joel