St John's Lye Heathland 🌳

This was our 2nd task of the day and once again we would join up with WeAct 🌍 to assist them with expanding the heathland by removing invasive saplings.

Wayne, Karen, & Adam were coming straight from Junior park run. Wayne drove to the Lye as he had to get away earlier than the rest of the team, Karen &Adam ran the 3k to the meeting point.

Anne & Agathe met along the canal at WWF an ran the 2.5k route. We all arrived at pretty much the same time. We met up with Charlie and his team after a brief of what we were going to do we walked to the heathland.

After a 7 mins walk we arrived to a shocking scene. There has been a fire over the last few days as WeAct were at the site at the beginning of the week and it was clear. The grounds were black with Ash and burnt grass heathland. Hayden from WeAct said it could have been started deliberately or was natural as it had been very dry recently.

WeAct had done some prep work already as they had cut and piled up silver birches which were over taking the heathland. We started to process them by cutting them back and making wild hedage fence. Anne, Karen, & Agathe were part of this team. Adam apart from running wanted an arm and shoulder workout 👊 so got stuck into removing some tree stumps Wayne was using his weaving skills to build up the hedge as well as putting in steaks to extend the line of the hedge fence.

While working away conversation started about Karen 3 week trip to Machu Picchu when she flys out on Thursday. Sounds amazing and we are looking forward to seeing photo's and hikes and following Karen on Strava 😊.

Withing an hour the hedge had grown and Adam was looking like the Hulk 🤣.

We have a few outdoor tasks coming up over the next few weeks with WeAct 🌍 which have been listed as part of Goodgym's Working in Nature partnership with WWF.

Woking Junior Park Run

Woking Junior Park Run returned this morning after last weeks Surrey 1/2 Marathon had taken over the park. It was great seeing the faces of the young runners who also took part last Sunday for the Kids Race showing off their medals 🥇

Wayne, Karen, Adam, & Caterina were out on the course as marshals cheering and encouraging the runners around the 2k course. Even though the sky's were gray it was great conditions to run 😊

In total this morning there were 131 runners with the fastest time an amazing 07:00. There were also 62 PB's greatrunning by everyone.

Coming out this morning was quite a shock, with a bitterly cold air. Still, that didn't stop five Goodgymers from braving the weather and supporting the children. Everyone was super clear on their roles and got straight to it. Maybe the team wasn't feeling so awake this morning despite coffee as we didn't move much in the warm up! A countdown from the bandstand and straight to the start where the run soon began. It impresses us every time seeing all children challenge themselves and show true strength of character even at this tender age to go out and beat the elements. Well done children! 🏆 Everybody said their goodbyes and Wayne and Nadia headed onto the train task! Happy Sunday!

The evening was a bit grey and I need to wake up before the training task was about to start. I thought it would be a great idea to stretch the legs before the task. Quickly realising that I would not be able to do this and the task, I decided to get to the leisure centre a little early to grab a caffeine boost. Already there were James, Anne, Claire, Karen and Laura. Quickly having a chat I told them I needed a coffee and does anyone else want one. James said he would and to usher out both Nadia and Luan who had done the same thing.

After the coffees were drunk and everyone had arrived, Kirsty enthusiastically started to welcome all the runners to the session and went in to some details about GoodGym and what the groups is all about. When Kirsty had finished and there weren’t any questions, James, who put on the session went into the details on what we were going to do. James took his time to clearly relay the instructions for this session. The session starts with a light warm up, 1 or two laps of the park, during this time he will put markers to show the turning points for the distances to cover. He said, it will be 6, 3, 3, 6, 3, 3 , 6 with a two minute recover time after each distance completed. James clearly went into detail on how this type of run will help build muscle fibre to both help build speed and endurance ability.

As the session started, I lead the warm up by running a few laps of Woking Park. This was a light run just to activate the muscles and to get the blood pumping around the body. Making our way around and being conscious of the reps we were about to start on I thought that taking a shorter route around the park would be kinder for all of us, while James marked the distances. Heading along the shortcut took us to a flooded path so with a quick turn around we carried on following the outside path of the park. Just after half way round and to let everyone have a little change from the slow running we paused and started to do reserve lunges. After that we went into squats before returning to running back to James where we can start the session.

So having all arrived at the start, James kindly went through what was to be done again before we all heading off for the first 600 meter run which involved running to the marker placed by James and then back to where we started. Everyone went off at their own pace so everyone was able to maintain a pace that was going help push them to the next level. After the first 600m I quickly realised I had gone off too fast and was gassed out before I had even started!! Lucky Nadia had followed with me and was able to help me maintain that pace. Anne and Karen grouped together as there running speeds were very similar, although they were steaming through the recovery times!!!!!

Laura, Claire, Luan and James were all making great gains with their running speeds and keeping to the distances really well. I kept hearing lots of cheers and words of encouragement as other runners were taking their recovery rests, but not too sure if that is the best way to recover? But it didn’t seem to effect the runners and for me, it gave me a huge boost to find the will to keep going at a difficult pace. As we were all drawing to completing the interval session, everyone was giving it their all to finish on a high.

Brilliant, determined and gritty run from all the GoodGymers that did today’s session and we all went celebrate Anne in being awarded with the Sean Coxhead Inspiring Individual Award 2024 for GoodGym. Inspiring Anne, keep being brilliant 😊

Until the next session.