8 awesome runners ran 4km to spread the word about Craft Central!

We had a nice tidy little group last night and welcomed new runner Jess to the gang who has her eyes on a place in the New York marathon... fingers and toes crossed for you Jess!

It was a pretty nippy evening so we got warmed up fairly quickly and then made our way over to the delightful Greenwich foot tunnel! The first part is always nice, a gentle downhill followed by a looooong straight and then the sneaky uphill the other end and the temptation of the lift! Which I'm very proud to say that no one took advantage of... well done team!!! You stayed strong!

Craft Central exhibition centre is located north of the river on Westferry Road and so we were targeting nearby roads which turns out was Dom's neck of the woods! We went in search for the first street and split up into to groups and got posting! We had some pretty strong draft excluders in some of the houses, real thick brushes which mashed up the leaflets a treat! Luckily Andy's fold technique worked pretty well!

The leaflets were dwindling pretty quickly and after 3 or 4 streets we were all out! We jogged back to Island Gardens for a little fitness session involving some more running.. yay!

A little bit of fartlek!

For the fitness session this week, we had some fartlek on the cards. Which translates to mean "speed play". We had one nice long straight and then a squiggly path back to the start. So it was fast down the straight and then a slow recovery jog back to the beginning for a 30 to 60 second rest. 3 times around and we called it a night!

A nice slow jog back through the tunnel and to the uni for a stretch.... lovely!

Great job last night everyone! Well done for making it out on such a cold evening when so many others didn't! Lots of great running from everyone, nice one!

20 lovely runners ran 5km to help out at the amazing MEfA Montessori!

Well it was FREEEEEZING this evening but a whopping 20 Greenwich folk made it out for their weekly good deed! Nice one!!!

We had one new runner this evening, the lovely Claire who is just coming back to running after a knee operation last year and did absolutely brilliantly - well done Claire! Hope you enjoyed the first session! And we also welcomed Chloe who came along to the starter session on Saturday :)

After a little warm up running around in all sorts of directions we headed off! The Montessori is located up in Westcombe Park which involves a litttttle bit of a hill but as I always say, what goes up must come down!

We arrived at the Montessori and were greeted by the loveliest of ladies, the amazing Wendy! You can tell she is an education professional as she has the most calm and perfect manner! Love her!

Anyway, enough about my love for Wendy.... so we split into groups. A few people headed outside to tackle the pesky ivy. A small bathroom needed painting so a few people squuuuuueeeeeeezed in there. Whilst the bulk of the group organised and sorted a whole load of books!

After just half an hour, the books had all been sorted, put into piles and ticked off Mr Rogers's list! Meanwhile the twins were getting more paint on themselves than on the walls.... wouldn't want to be doing your washing at the weekend guys! Hope the paint comes out alright... although it definitely has the proper GoodGym look about it now!

The gardeners outside were also just about done, except Dom was just wrestling with one thick bit of tree trunk... don't worry we will come back for it another time! They brought through 4 bin liners jam packed full of ivy and other garden waste so you can definitely be proud of that!!

Light up hat!

We all gathered outside for a group photo and this is where we discovered THE most amazing invention probably ever??? Andy's amazing cap with a built in head torch!!!! Whack one of those on your birthday list guys and girls! Mind blown!!!

Sadly we didn't have time for a fitness session but you've all worked pretty hard these last few weeks so thought you deserved a little recovery week! You're welcome :) We headed back to the uni, had a little stretch and parted ways!

Well done tonight everyone! Great work on the task, and well done for getting so stuck in. If you want to find out any more information on the Montessori then have a look here. As I said I'm not here next week but Vickie is taking over so I'm sure you'll be in for a treat! See you in a few weeks!

23 runners ran 4km to help out at Clothes 4 Causes charity shop!

A great start to the year so far from GoodGym Greenwich! We had 4 new runners join us last night, Finn, James, Ophelia and Mahim... welcome all! Hope you had a good first run with us!

The grand opening of Greenwich Zoo!

With a shorter run on our hands, we had a little bit of extra time to have some fun in the warm up! We played a little game where everyone was given a bit of paper with an animal on it and then you had to run around acting like the animal with the aim being to try and find the other person in the group who is the same animal as you! Lots of moo-ing, baa-ing, squeaking, neighing, barking and hissing going on... now I know how Noah felt on his ark... crikey! After a couple of rounds, we headed off on our run!

I forgot to take a group snap the beginning so we stopped along the river with a lovely lit up London skyline as the backdrop... beautiful! Then we continued our journey and arrived at the shop a few moments later.

We were greeted by Veronique who sadly broke the news to us that they had recently been flooded so had to move out a lot of the clothes that we were meant to be sorting. Instead everyone got stuck in with tidying the shop, making sure everything was nice and neat and in colour order. There was also loads of rubbish from the downstairs room which needed bringing upstairs to be collected by a man (or lady!) in a van tomorrow!

Amongst the rubbish were a few wicker baskets which looked far too good to throw away and were quickly snapped up by Nina and Marta! And the only price they had to pay was running back carrying them! Not bad!

15 minutes of tidying and sorting and we were done! It doesn't take long when you have 46 helping hands!

Strides!

We ran back the way we came, past the Cutty Sark and a little further along the river where there was a nice long straight, perfect for our fitness session which consisted of 5x 20s of strides with jog back recoveries! This is something you can do once or twice a week at the end of a run and it will really help improve your running form. If you want to read a little bit more about it and the benefits, have a look here. All you need is a nice straight bit of road! Give it a try next time and let me know how you get on!

After everyone was suitably puffed, we headed back to the uni for a cool down stretch and called it a night!!!

FB group

For you 4 lovely new runners, please feel free to join our GoodGym Greenwich Facebook Group where you can find out what other people are up to. We've got loads of Greenwich runners doing all sorts of races which you can of course get involved in as well! Christian has managed to get us 10% discount for the 10k race in Greenwich Park and we're getting a good crowd together so feel free to join!

Well done last night everyone! Top work on the task and great running all round!! See you next week!