A small and committed team gathered on top of Mile End Park’s Art Pavilion last night to run through our pre-task workout.

The Squat Masterclass

Today’s workout focused on exercises to support the hips and knees. After a couple of mobility and warm-up exercises, we started with squats. Easy-looking but surprisingly complex to get right, the team patiently performed squat after squat with a new instruction after each rep.

We moved to single-leg squats, lateral lunges and ‘the perfect lunge’, finishing with some push-ups against the fence.

As we ran through our last stretch, we were joined by John from Friends of Mile End Park.

Who are Friends of Mile End Park?

This independent group aims to encourage a sense of local ownership towards the park, helping to promote awareness of the park and its facilities, and encourage and support their use.

Proactive with everything from fund-raising for additional resources for the park to hosting sociable, monthly litter-picks, it’s a fantastic group for GG TH to be asked to join for our Monday night activity.

(You can read more about the Friends, including their monthly litter-pick here).

As we prepared our equipment (a test in patience and tolerance last night btw, as we battled strong winds attaching rubbish sacks inside the game-changing litter-bag hoops), we made our plan. John reassured us that there would be plenty of rubbish along the southern areas of the park.How right he was: as we filled our bags, we were struck by the amount of litter that could already be found on a Monday night.

Half time

Just as our bags became full to overflowing, we approached a bin: “All change,” said John. Little did we know, we were heading for Part II with brand new sacks to head back to base.

A race against time, as we headed down Clinton Road, we just couldn’t resist the last few crushed Red Bull cans: in it all went, and we were still posing for our last pic by 8:15pm.

A fantastic effort, everyone! No mean feat to fill 12 bags on a windy, wet December night. (And a special shout-out to Johnny, who joined us for a pre-birthday task - Happy Birthday, Johnny!).

Until next time.