I must say I'm pretty pleased with the pun this week :)

Well a few of us were thrown out of whack last weekend with the clocks going forward AND the Bank Holiday. Victoria was so keen for the task in fact that she turned up an entire 24 hours early for it. Glad you came back today Victoria! She blamed a bank holiday brain but for our check in we shared times we've missed events by getting the time wrong. Julian and Victoria shared how they both once entirely missed their flights, an expensive mistake and the trauma clearly still lives on. It's understandable Victoria, it was probably a bank holiday. Julian, ever appearing as the organised one also was a day early for his dentist appointment. Wait for it, it was of course scheduled for twothurty!! If I was a receptionist at a dentist I wouldn't book people for that time - the jokes must be insufferable.

Anyway, we digress. It was wonderful to have Jenny back from all her travels - GoodGym hasn't been the same without you Jenny! And lovely to have Louise join us this week.

After our check in we split into a group of walkers and a group of runners for the short jaunt to Clothes for Causes. It was great to be back here and we love this place. Clothes for Causes is a charity shop where the proceeds go towards buying essentials for homeless people.

Our mission tonight: moving multiple boxes of socks from the back room to the downstairs storage room.

We arranged ourselves into a sock relay team, Olivia taking some excellent snaps of the organised chaos and Marta falling in love with a rather dashing poodle jumper.

Then after a few boxes making their way down the line, things turned surreal and Louise started singing the 80s classic Living in a Box in a beautiful soprano opera before Olivia told her to put a sock in it. Someone put on some House and Marta went on a murderous rampage before Julian told her that sometimes life socks and to go and get a drink before her 8 o'clock curfew.

So that's what we did, marvelling that it was still light as we left the task once the job was done. We ended up at the Yacht, a lovely spot for a drink or two. What a lovely evening, thank you all!

Next week we're helping out at Glyndon Community Centre and we've got Westcombe Woodlands and Maryon Wilson Community Garden on Saturday.

Until next time!

And what a lovely start to June last night was! Despite a last minute cancellation of our task we enjoyed a leisurely run along the river as the pubs filled up with people starting their long bank holiday weekends. Thanks to Minh, we were treated to a viewing of the crazy golf course where we will be showing off our top notch putting abilities next Friday. (I'll just be pleased if I hit the ball more than I gouge out the grass.)

After a punishing session of Bring Sally Up and Down squats and lunges we felt adequately deserving of a pint so headed to the pub to enjoy the bunting and continue our nattering.

Thank you for a lovely evening everyone!

Was it rainy and cold, or was it sunny and muggy? Several of us were caught off guard last night when we experienced the good ol' Egnlish April showers..despite it being May. Happy May 4th no less for all our Star Wars fans!

So after a quick warm up we had a gentle jog down to Clothes for Causes where some of us got to work sorting clothes into colours, wondering with several items whether they were dresses or tops or clothes for people with tails?

We had so much fun with these dress/top/tail clothes in fact, that we forgot to take photos. So it looks like the guys just stood around having a nice chat when they actually disappeared entirely, scurrying into the mysterious underbelly of the shop and popping up again dragging huge bags of stock with them, blinking like little moles emerging from their underground tunnels.

We may have left one or two mole people down there but we're back in a month - just imagine how much sorting they can get done in that time.

Sara took us on a lovely scenic jog back along the river and then got us to work with a punishing fitness session.

Some of us were so crippled by the end that Andy had to peel us off the floor and bundle us in his van to take us home. Luckily I live right by the hospital so he dropped me off there and I live to tell the tale.

Until next time guys!

19 awesome runners ran 5km and scaled multiple hills to help out at Clothes For Causes charity shop!

Quite a lot of films have been filmed in Greenwich. Because that's the thing about Greenwich, it's just bloomin' great for making films. I mean, Steven Spielberg and I were chatting once and he turned to me and said, 'I bloody wish we filmed Jaws in Greenwich, Alex'. And then there was that Patrick Swayze who knocked on my door and said, 'Alex, look, I know we filmed Dirty Dancing at that resort in Lake Lure, but we really should have done it on Deptford Creek!'

And it's that last true story that I really want to get at, dear reader, for Greenwich is just the best place for a certain type of film. The romantic film. A little part of London littered with Cupid's arrows. And this, as we lead up to St Valentine's Day, was how we began our evening of do-gooding in Greenwich this evening. In true GG Greenwich fashion, Sarah asked us to go around the circle and say our name, our number, and this week, our plans for Friday evening. And then we sort of did some running and do-gooding and all went home.

The end :)

Okay, FINE. Most of us are doing bloody nothing on Friday. NOTHING.

... anyway... enough of this silliness (blame brother Steve for taking so long to cook my post-GG dinner) for I have some rather excellent good-deeding to report. At exactly 5 past 7 this evening and with the night's initial low point all forgotten, a stream of red thunder hurtled down Trafalgar Road with the Clothes for Causes shop in its sights. If you haven't heard about Clothes for Causes, every year this lovely group distribute over 15,000 items to over 5000 people who need them. Brilliantly awesome.

Upon arrival, the lovely team shouted 'OLD STOCK OUT, NEW STOCK IN'. Well that was the gist of it anyway. And like a well-oiled-good-karma-seeking-machine, the GG Greenwich crew formed a human chain of good-deeding wonderfulness, with the bagged-up old stock swiftly passing down it and into the van. Having filled it up to the brim, with half the group having given the clothes rails a tidy and a spruce, and with plenty of time still on the clock, we said our goodbyes and popped on over to Maze Hill for a little pain good-natured-and-really-fun-hill-repetitions (although don't get me started on that time Sly Stallone sent me an MSN saying, 'Alex, that Cliffhanger film I were in should've been filmed on Maze Hill!'). Everyone did stunningly brilliantly in their reps up and down that rather endless incline!

With lactate in our muscles and nattering together, we headed back to the University for a stretch and a cool down. Nice one guys. And that... is a wrap. A lovely evening all!

Community missions coming up!

A few community missions to sink your teeth into over the next couple of weeks. No DBS check required!

Clear out the Crisis warehouse in Southwark this Saturday.

Prep and serve food at Mycenae House for the next Good Food In Greenwich Pop Up Kitchen on Thursday 20th Feb.

Be a mama or papa mermaid on Thursday 27th Feb and help some young girls in their 5k challenge!

Conservation work including sawing, lopping and digging at Vanbrugh Pits on 29th Feb.

22 runners ran 3km to help at the Clothes For Causes charity shop!

Firstly.. big congratulations to Elle who ran the Berlin Marathon on Sunday. After months of injury setbacks, she persisted with gym sessions, swimming and cycling to keep her fitness up and blew the marathon out of the water with a huge PB and a London Good For Age qualifying time of 3h44!!!! Just amazing!!!!!

Secondly, more congratulations are in order for slightly different reasons as Pieter and his wife had their baby girl, Robin, last week!! Can't wait to meet her, I've got a feeling she's going to be running before she can walk!

And LAST but certainly not least, MORE celebrations are in order because Sara completed her 50th good deed!!! Sara's running has absolutely transformed since she started running with us in July last year and it has been a joy to witness!! Each week her Parkrun PB seems to come down by a few seconds and I can't wait to see how she gets on at the Oxford Half in ten days time! Nice work Sara, keep doing GOOOOOD!!!

We had an unusual amount of GoodGym tourists with us last night? I don't know if I missed an email or something?? Anyway say hello to: Mo from Hammersmith & Fulham, Mark from Bromley, Vicki from Redbridge, Morag from Wandsworth and Stephen from Sheffield!! Welcome one and all!! Hope you enjoyed your first GoodGym Greenwich!

After a quick little warm up, we headed straight for the shop. Veronique was there to greet us and explained the tasks that needed doing. Mainly we needed to bring some rails through and then hang the clothes on them, plus a few little paint jobs as well. I had a feeling that with this many of us, we wouldn't be there that long...!

It was lovely to see the new shop though! I think it's going to be amazing when it opens (which is supposedly on Saturday by the way). And whilst the other shop is still open across the road they are having a £1 sale on everything to try and get rid of it so there are LOADS of bargains to be had... that shop get's some seriously decent clobber donated so head on down and see what you can find!

After about 20 minutes, all the rails had been moved into place and it was beginning to look like an actual shop! Nice!!!

We said our goodbyes and then since we had a bit of spare time, headed for the best hill in Greenwich.. MAZE HILL :) 3 reps running a decent steady effort on the way up to get the heart and legs working hard and then a nice easy jog or walk back down to recover. I later found out on Strava that Jenny had already done 6 hill repeats before even getting to GoodGym so kudos to her for doing 9 hills last night!

We jogged back to the uni, had a stretch and called it a night!! Great work everyone! Thanks so much for coming.

Finally huge good luck to Tom running the Bournemouth Marathon this weekend!! You're going to be AWESOME!!

See you all next time!

Another Saturday, another mission! Except this Saturday it was no ordinary mission - it was #GG Super Saturday, GG's biggest ever day of missions, attempting to have every single area up and down the country doing a community mission of some sort!

In Greenwich, the mission was to help out Clothes 4 Causes renovate their new shop. They are moving just across the road to a bigger, swankier place, so they wanted to sell as much of their current stock as possible so they wouldn't have to move the whole lot.

Enter Pieter and I. By the time I showed up, Pieter was already fully immersed in the task, sorting clothes and putting them in hangers to be displayed at the (old) shop. I joined in and soon the rail where we were hanging the fashion pieces was starting to look full! We sorted and moved some of the pieces to other parts of the shop, navigating through customers along the way. All the clothes were going for the bargain price of £1, so you can imagine the shop was actually pretty full!

After little more than an hour, we had run out of clothes and of hangers. On the way out, we spotted a basket outside the shop full of books which we could just take for free! Never one to miss an opportunity to add to my ever growing library, I grabbed a book by Pieter's boss (aka, Facebook's COO), which made it the perfect end to a perfect mission!!