What a difference seven days makes, no snow and unfortunately no task!

With a cancellation from Hackney Adventure Playground that I couldn't find cover for it was undoubtedly time for a fitness session. Seventeen fine specimens came together and laid down some hard efforts. Rodrigo making a cameo fresh from Florida , what a treat it was to see the big man don the black t-shirt. Come back dude! Emily and Jo came for their first sessions at GG and GGN respectively, lovely additions to the team , I do hope to see you back on a Wednesday eve.

With kilometre reps to begin with, 2 or 3 depending on how you felt/if you ran The Big Half. Very useful pacing work, with some nailing the increase, some almost doing it....either way it's a superuseful exercise. Prolonged time at faster than 5k pace brings on big physical adaption. I enjoyed the friendly competitive spirit, with the 4min per k group taking chunks out of each other.

Core carving was the next course, a double set to really light up those muscles. With some impressive sounds exiting Graham, I imagine that's what a grieving elk sounds like. The session wasn't just over yet though. Relays to finish the session. Two teams of five went head to head. Practising their sprinting technique and really searching for power on the final straight.

Marvellous night all in all, even managed a pint after. Next week we're at Cody Dock sign up here it will be a gentler session with some volunteering energy in the middle.

See you beauts then!

A really sunny Wednesday evening, so I got an ice cream whilst waiting for the excited runners to arrive. Unfortunately, our planned painting task has been postponed, but luckily, Colchester in Bloom are always ready to give us something to do, and particularly since the judging is happening soon, we can really help them to spread their workload.

We welcomed new goodgymer Nafisa, and we reminded ourselves about Fay's Cake morning to send her off on her epic bike ride.

Our task was to dead head the flowers in the various border boxes in the town centre. These were at the top of Balkerne hill great, either side of Crouch street, the corner of Headgate and at the Vineyard Street Car Park. This allowed us to do a nice run around the original boundary of Colchester, before descending back to the River via Castle park.

As a warm sunny evening, we attracted a lot of attention as we made our way making Colchester more beautiful, and have a couple of recruits for Goodgym Ipswich when it starts and Goodgym Southhampton whenever that takes off.

When a teenager heckled us saying we were all really slow and ran ahead of us, Tommy and Chris accelerated to show just how fast we could be! All in jest of course.

On the river path, we did a drill where we took our arms out of running to focus on lifting the legs with the hip flexors. All of the runners found it really tiring, and it helps to understand just how a much stronger core can lead to faster running. It also helps to encourage you to engage your core more in running.

As we made our way back to Leisure World, in a slightly comical unfolding, David ran crash bang into Ian. It was comedy. David was looking behind him and Ian had come to a standstill as there was a stag beetle on the path. Using a couple of sticks, Ian rescued the stag beetle, so not only did we help make the town beautiful, we also protected the local wildlife.

Thank's to Sue for the pun!