24 awesome do-gooders ran to help patch up airbeds at St Marks Church for the winter night shelter!

We had loads of new faces tonight which is always GREAT to see! Welcome to Aima, Shahzeb, Hayah, Mian and Shona! Hope you all had a good first run with us!

Very disappointed to learn about the lack of pancakes consumed on Tuesday, hopefully none of you gave up pancakes for lent so you can give it another try in the next few days to redeem yourselves!

After a few laps of the quad and some chain-tag, we headed off via Greenwich town centre to the wonderful St Mark's church who hold a weekly night shelter on a Thursday evening. There is one every night of the week in the surrounding areas, Charlton, Woolwich etc but on Thursday's it's hosted at the church and the visitors get a nice hot dinner, a warm place to sleep for the night and breakfast the next day! Lovely! Only problem is that some of the airbeds have been losing a bit of air via some pesky punctures and it was our job to locate and eradicate!

Everyone grabbed a bed and began feeling around for holes. Disclaimer: If there are any euphemisms or innuendos in this report they are 100% unintentional.

Many techniques were being adopted from sitting on the beds to see if any air puffed out to slopping some soapy suds on to see if any bubbles appeared. All valid methods and within minutes we had our first success... "YES, FOUND IT!". Once a hole was located, it was circled with a marker and then later patched up by dream team Jenny and Marta.

Meanwhile, Alex and Andy were having a grand time outside in the scout garden - which we will be back to help with in a few weeks time, it is very overgrown!

After half an hour, we had checked over 20 beds and found loads of punctures! Nice work everyone!

We said our goodbyes to Tony and then it was time for some hills but since the majority of the group have a half marathon on Sunday, I thought it would be best to opt for a nice long relaxing stretch session instead! You're welcome.

Then we headed back inside and had loads of treats which Natalie brought for her birthday, but she headed home before the end so didn't even get to enjoy her own snacks! Happy birthday Natalie, hope you had a lovely day and thanks for celebrating it with us!

Great job everyone!!! See you next time for a longer run where we will be picking up some flyers and distributing them in Greenwich on the way back!

Some community missions to get involved with over the next couple of days!

Guide running tomorrow night in Paddington with Achilles International mixed disability running group.

Conservation work at Vanbrugh pits this Saturday.

Best of luck to all those running The Big Half on Sunday! See you there! And we have a space booked at The Hare and Billet in Blackheath so please join us for some post run celebrations!

18 awesome runners ran 4km to help tidy up St Mark's Church!

After two weeks away it was great to be back! We welcomed a new runner to the group, Matt, who usually runs with Bexley and is a London Overground train driver... cool!!

It was also cause for celebration as the wonderful Elle was about to complete her 50th good deed!!!! I'm sure we can all agree it's been an absolute DELIGHT having Elle on our runs over the past 18 months and, as with everyone that seems enter this group, her running has gone from strength to strength and I am beyond excited to see what she pulls out of the bag at the Paris Marathon 2020! Such a bright running future ahead of you Elle and keep up the good deeding of course! Here's to the next 50!

We were slightly delayed getting the bags in the room so we just did a few laps to warm us up and then headed straight for St Mark's. We stopped for a few Christmassy snaps along the way and arrived at the church moments later, greeted by the always organised and ever enthusiastic, Tony Othen! He explained that the church was being turned into a polling station, well a DOUBLE polling station actually. The one up the road is closed so St Mark's will be expecting twice as many visitors and so it was even more important to tidy up and make the entrance clear and safe for all the lovely voters!

Our main job was simply clearing and bagging up all the leaves from the front and side of the building. We split up into two groups, grabbed various shovels, leaf grabbers, rakes, brooms and bin bags and starting filling 'em up!

After just 20 minutes, the place had been transformed. The group working on the right side were done and relocated themselves to just around the corner and cleared up around there too. All the leaves were gone, time for one last quick sweep up and then to find Tony for a photo!

After packing all the tools back in the shed, we headed off for some hill reps up Point Hill, since our run to the church was fairly short. Four times up and down and we called it a night! NICE ONE TEAM!!

Parkrun

Details for this Saturday's Parkrun can be found here. You can walk, jog, run or volunteer to be a marshal/timer/barcode scanner/tailwalker etc so there is something for everyone! We'll grab some breakfast and coffee after too :)

Great work last night everyone! What a transformation! I'll see most of you on Friday for our Christmas bash and we have one more group run left this year so get signed up and let's see out 2019 with a bang!

22 fantastic runners ran 3km to fix punctures in airbeds at St Marks Church!

Another beautiful evening down in Greenwich last night! We had one new runner who joined us, welcome Adelaide to our wonderful running posse! It was also cause for celebration for the second week running. This time it was the marvelous Pieter who was celebrating his 50th good deed! Pieter has been running with us for less than a year and has already clocked up 50 good deeds which is truly amazing. He does group runs and missions week in week out, proving that once again consistency is most certainly key! It's been awesome having you in this group Pieter, keep up the fantastic work and here's to the next 50!

Due to an event happening in the university, we couldn't use our usual warm up spot so we settled with a light jog and headed straight to the church via the park. We were greeted by the lovely Tony who took us into the room full of airbeds! It was rather warm in the church and there was the option of some gardening outside to be done which I think was music to a few people's ears!

For everyone else, it was time to take mattresses into our own hands (see what I did there???)... we paired up, grabbed an airbed, plugged it in and started feeling around for little puffs of air. Then it was just a case of sanding it down to create a rough surface and sticking a bike tube patch over it!

There were lots of different techniques being adopted. It was far too loud in the room to listen for the punctures but the best method seemed to be to just rub the bed all over until the puncture was located!

I was genuinely quite surprised at how quickly it was all being done if I'm totally honest! Some groups were getting through them in no time at all! Sadly we didn't have time to do them all but we managed to get through about 25 of them which is AMAZING!!

About the night shelter

During the winter there is a night shelter for the homeless which is open every evening at different locations around the borough and on Thursday nights it is held at St Marks. All the beds that were in that room had been taken from all the different locations so it wasn't just St Marks you were helping, it was the other 6 locations too so that will be hugely appreciated! Over the next few days they will be redistributed and ready to be slept on next winter! NICE WORK!!!

We took a little photo outside and then headed off for a mini running lesson in the park!

Foot strike

We often don't really think about the way we run, we just run! Which is great but as we run more and build up more miles which I know a lot of you are, it is really important to be doing it in the safest and most efficient way possible. One of the easiest way to make improvements is by focusing some attention on how your foot lands on the ground. We want to be aiming for a mid-foot or FULL FOOT strike on the ground to maximise the amount of nerve endings stimulated on the foot to gain as much feedback from the ground beneath us. If we run on our toes for example and the ground is a bit rough underfoot, there is limited stability there which can very easily lead to all sorts of lower leg injuries. There is a video here with Shane Benzie who is a movement specialist and he explains it all in a far more articulate way than I did yesterday! So give that a watch if you're interested.

I am becoming a bit of a foot nerd recently so don't be surprised if there is more of this kind of stuff heading your way! But it is all for your own good of course!

Everyone had a go at running with this new knowledge in mind and I could see improvements straight away, especially with those of you who I know usually run right up on your toes.. and I'm one of them too so I appreciate how difficult it is to alter your gait just like that! But well done for giving it a go and bear it in mind for your future runs!

We jogged back to the uni, had a little stretch followed by some chocolatey Greenwich Goodies to celebrate Pieter's big milestone!

Great work last night everyone! Tony was absolutely delighted by all the work you did! Next week we have a new task over at Natalie's school! Hope you can join us!