25 runners ran 4km to help out at the Christchurch School garden!

We had our biggest group of the year so far last night! 25 of you wahoooooo!!! We were joined by new runner Nik and GG Southwark runner Emma. Welcome to the gang!

On that note, for those of you who are slightly newer to the group, we have a Facebook group for GoodGym Greenwich so please join and you'll be able to keep updated with any random bits and pieces that are going on!

There was also some good news as Claire arrived without her bike.... YAY! Nice to see you up and running again!

We played a little game, got nice and warmed up and then headed via the river to the school!

10 minutes later we arrived and were greeted by Fiona who had everything organised and laid out ready for us!

There were 2 main tasks. One was digging and leveling off an area for a beehive to eventually sit and the other task involved gathering up woodchip to build a bank on one side. Everyone grabbed a fork and got stuck in!

It was great to see all the changes since last time we came. It was so much greener! And our gravel pit had been finished off for us, but it took 5 guys 4 hours of hard graft to complete it all so I think they must have been pretty thankful of the headstart that we gave them!

After half an hour, most of the woodchip had been cleared and the other bed had all the big bits of rubble removed, the weeds taken out and had been leveled off nicely!

We took a lovely photo and then headed back a slightly different way to arrive back at the uni for a quick little circuit. And it was so nice that it was still light by that point! Hooray!

One fast lap to finish off and we were done! Andy had kindly brought in some biscuits for us all, some lovely buttery French ones which were VERY much appreciated and then we called it a night :)

#finishformatt

As I mentioned yesterday, a few of us will be heading to Tower Bridge on Sunday morning to complete the 3.7 miles for Matt Campbell. We are running there (nice easy pace) so will be meeting at 9am on the main road outside Waitrose in Greenwich or you can meet us there for 10am. Would be great to see you there :)

Great work on the task last night everyone! You got so much done yet again! Keep up the good work and I'll see you next time!

26 awesome runners ran 4km to help St Mark's Church!

It was cause for celebration last night as our very own Steve was achieving his 50th good deed! Amazing!!!

We also had a few GoodGym tourists: Dan from Newham, and Rachel all the way over from GG Cardiff! And last but not least, we had new runner Vicky join us too... welcome to the GGG squad everyone!

National Pet Day ♡

We spent a few mins going round talking about our first pet, lots of fish and rabbits! Marta even wanted us to adopt a GG dog to bring on the group runs.... We actually did have a lady bring her dog to a group run once, but she didn't come back after the first one :(

Anyway off we went for a little warm up, throwing it back to when we were all 10 with a game of stuck in the mud! After a few minutes everyone was suitably warm and ready to run! Ben placed the ceremonial Greenwich cape upon Steve and off we went!

About 10 minutes later, we arrived at St Marks and were greeted by the lovely Tony who told us a bit about the church and the task at hand. There was some Ikea style furniture which needed assembling so Steve C and David headed off to do that. Everyone else grabbed a rake, a broom, a shovel, whatever they could get their hands on and started tearing up the weeds. There were 3 areas that needed attention and within minutes we could start to see a difference.

Lots of people paired up, one held a bag open while the other shoveled in the weeds. Good team work going on! After the weeds had been removed, it was time to hammer in the mini fence! Which actually proved harder than we thought with all the gravel embedded in the soil, but as always these guys got the job done!

Nina the best sweeper

The task was nearly finished, the place just needed one final sweep, and who better than the best sweeper in the world.... Nina.

The clock struck 8 and it was time to head off! We took a nice photo with Steve's cape flapping and ran off into the distance.

Strides!

Hill repeats were on the agenda for the fitness session yesterday but as always I changed my mind last minute and settled for some strides. As I mentioned, these are short sharp sprints of about 100 metres or 20 seconds ish and it's a great thing to add onto the end of your easy runs as they really help improve your running form, I'd recommend about 6-8 of them. Just make sure you bring your heart rate right down after each one, so a slow jog recovery or even a walk.

We only had time for 4 of them as the pub was calling! We headed back to the uni for a little stretch and then off to the Old Brewery for Steve's celebrations and the second edition of "Which twin?"!

Thanks for all your efforts last night! Great work on the task, you got so much done! And awesome running as always! See you next week!

12 awesome runners ran 6km to help out at St George's church in Westcombe Park!

We had two new runners join us yesterday, Fiona and Lucy.. welcome ladies! Hope you enjoyed your first GoodGym run!

Our evening started off with a mini adventure... our usual bag drop room was occupied so for the first time ever we got to go through the double doors at the end of the corridor and up the spiral staircase... this is about as exciting as things get for us. But then, in the end, our usual room freed up so back down we went, sticking with what we know!

After a little warm up, we headed up Maze Hill and down towards the church. We arrived about 15 minutes later and were greeted by Tim the reverend of the church. He had two tasks for us, one of which was raking the remainder of the leaves out front and bagging them up. And the second task was moving a bunch of stuff from a stairwell and into the basement.

To me, to you, to me

The group was split in half and everyone got stuck in. In the church there were lots of huge panels of wood that needed to go down which proved a bit tricky with the staircase but some excellent Chucklebrothers style teamwork came in to play and it was all dandy!

After 20 minutes, all the stuff from the stairwell had been cleared so it was all hands on deck for the raking and bagging up of the leaves! Although the hardest job seemingly was actually just opening up the bin bags! By 8pm, most of the leaves were bagged up and it was nearly time to go!

All the bags were put on the big blue tarps that we also filled with leaves last time, ready to hopefully somehow be collected over the coming weeks!

We headed back to the uni for our monthly 1km time trial. We usually go round anticlockwise but there was a guy running around giving it the beans so I didn't want to ruin his session so for a change we did clockwise! 4 laps of the 250m circuit and then we called it a night!

Great running last night everyone and thanks for putting so much effort into the task! It would have taken Tim forever to get all those leaves together but you managed it all in just a couple of minutes so well done! They can now start work on the community garden!

11 awesome runners ran 5km to help The Bridge Community Centre at the East Greenwich Pleasaunce!

It was back to The Bridge last night, which funnily enough was the first ever task I went to on my first ever GoodGym run two years ago! Crazy how time flies huh...

Anyway, we had two lovely new runners join us, Jenny and Loveth! Welcome ladies, hope you had a good first run with us!

We went around the circle and talked about BREAKFAST! Turns out a lot of you have quite a bit of time on your hands in the mornings with some very extravagant breakfasts!! And I was very pleased to hear that everyone managed to at least have something for breakfast! Top marks gang, well done.

After a little warm up and obligatory group photo, we headed down the main road to the pleasaunce. It's actually such a nice little place, I know we couldn't really see much because it was dark but there is a cute little park tucked away around there so well worth a visit during the day time when it's sunny!

We were greeted by Raeleen who opened the gate for us and we made our way to the centre where we met Ruth and little Henrietta. The two main tasks were tidying up the toy container and weeding the front raised beds so we split the group in half and got stuck in!

Thankfully we had a few torches and head torches between us so light wasn't too much of an issue. Ruth explained to the weeders what needed pulling out meanwhile the other guys had got started with taking everything out of the container. We had about half an hour which was just enough time to empty everything out, give it a good sweep and put everything back nice and neatly.

30 minutes later and the container was done! And the weeders had collected a few bucketfulls of weeds - NICE!

Biscuit time!

We love coming to The Bridge because they always have biscuits and squash for us! After a little nibble on a biscuit or two (or 6), we said our goodbyes and then made our way back. The fitness session was a few hill repeats! Because we don't do enough of them and they are so good for building leg strength and promoting good running form. Besides we are so spoilt for hills around here because of Greenwich Park so don't avoid them!

Since the park was shut, we did a few repeats of Maze Hill instead which is just outside the park. It's quite a long hill which we go up quite often with GoodGym so a good one to practice on. We didn't go all the way up, just to the 3rd speedbump, and everyone turned around when the first person got to the speedbump, so the idea was for everyone to be pushing themselves for the same amount of time. We did 3 repeats with the 3rd and final one being as far as you want to go! Lee made it all the way to the tree at the top, came down and then had to go back up it a fourth time to go home! NICE ONE!!!

One for you to try...

So the next time you're out around the park, why not get a bit of elevation in and go up and down a few hills. You don't have to full on sprint up them because you will just tire yourself out and not be able to complete the session but run up it at a steady pace and then recovery jog down to the bottom. Do this 6-10 times on your run and aim to get one of those types of runs in each week. It can be a long and shallow hill or a short steep hill, doesn't matter! Either way there are plenty of both in Greenwich Park! Let me know how you get on!

We had a nice steady jog back to the uni, a little cool down stretch and we were done!

Nice work last night everyone! We got loads done and the ladies at the Bridge were really happy with what you achieved! See you next time!