The promise of burgers brought out an enthusiastic bunch of 17 runners ready to work and do good to earn their food.

We gathered at the meeting spot and counted heads (a few of us were number 9...), each saying our favourite cereal with most options on the health spectrum represented.

We dropped off our stuff and completed some loops of the green in the Naval College - in an exciting twist we were on a different patch of grass to normal! We limbered up with a quick game of “if I say 1, touch the ground with your left hand” and so on. We then set off on our way along the river and through some residential roads (navigated skilfully be Elle) to GoodGym Favourite Christchurch School.

Our task was to clear grass in a long 1 metre by 8ish-metre strip, ready for trees to be planted on Saturday for an orchard. At the same time, a barrel of water had to be emptied eventually moved to allow the digging to pass seamlessly by. Armed with forks and spades to dig, and watering cans to transport water, we got to work.

We dug (and forked and emptied) for victory for half an hour and in classic GoodGym fashion completed our allotted task so got to move onto another plot of grass! The tree planters on Saturday won’t know what’s hit them!

We headed back to base camp to pick up our bags and half-heartedly stretch before it was time for the main event - the food! We munched our way through beef, chicken and vegan burgers and plenty of chips, celebrating 4 years of GoodGym Greenwich! A lovely evening full of good friends, good deeds and good food - not much else to ask for on a Wednesday!

Thank you to Alice for the run report this week! If anyone else fancies it, let me know!

17 excellent elves ran 3km to help tidy up at Ballast Quay Garden!

It was the final group run night of the DECADE and even the soggy weather couldn't dampen our Christmas cheer this eve!

We firstly congratulated Jenny for her amazing debut marathon in Barbados. After volunteering so many hours, raising a tonne of money and running multiple laps of the London Relay, she was entered into the prize draw for an all expenses paid trip to Barbados to run the marathon and she only went and won! And somehow she managed to keep it a secret since August..... that in itself is quite remarkable! You can check out her incredible run here. Huge congrats Jenny, super proud of your running this year, it has gone from strength to strength and you're always doing it with a big smile on your face which is what it's all about!

We then went round to find out some of the weird and wonderful Christmassy traditions that take place amongst the group. The main take away from that little exercise was that Sara's house seems like the most favorable place to spend Christmas with extra presents on Boxing Day.. you're onto a winner there Sar! Score! And Amy's perhaps on the other end of the spectrum with a forced horror film night on Christmas eve! So harsh!

After a quick warm up we headed over to the garden. Diane who looks after the place had to attend an appointment so couldn't be there this evening but she wishes the "good runners" (that's you guys) a very warm and happy festive break! She also had kindly left the garden unlocked and put out everything we needed for our evening of fun to continue. Our task was essentially giving the place a final Christmas makeover, clearing as many leaves as possible and clipping back the ivy!

Everyone grabbed either some loppers or some leaves and got stuck in! As always, leaf matter was to go straight into the Thames, although with the direction of the wind, some would later end up at the other end of the garden instead! After twenty-ish minutes, our work was done! We headed back to the university for a final festive fitness session!

A little Christmassy quiz/relay in an attempt to get you all in the holiday spirit plus a few extra laps in between to keep warm. In the end it was team Oliver who took the win but since it's GoodGym EVERYONE is a winner of course and the prizes included some gingerbread people, mince pies and star cakes for all! Thank you to the fabulous bakin' boys Lee and JC for some top sweet treats.

Don't forget that there will still be missions and community missions taking place so you can still get your GoodGym fix over the next couple of weeks!

Well done everyone! Just want to say a huge thanks from me for making 2019 such a wonderful year for GoodGym Greenwich. We've had countless PBs, thousands of good deeds and infinite happy times along the way. You all inspire me every day and I can't wait to see what 2020 has in store for us all! Have the merriest of Christmases, enjoy the time off and see you in the new year!!!

17 wonderful runners ran 4km to help at the St Lukes School Nature Garden!

Each Wednesday seems to get colder and colder but the energy and enthusiasm from GoodGym Greenwich never seems to fade!

We also seem to be building up a small French contingent too, although due to their amazing English, JC and Thomas didn't even realise the other person was French despite their accents! Plus Andy having spent lots of time in France is surely a wonderful French speaker! Also fun fact, I am half French but my speaking is TERRIBLE, but I guess this is as good an excuse as any to practice it. Any other French speakers in the group let me know!

We did a few laps to warm up and then set off via the tunnel and arrived at St Lukes ten or so minutes later. Myra was in the distance unloading the car and getting things ready for us. We shined our headtorches her way and she came over to let us in!

I always love coming here to see how the garden has developed because most of which we have helped with on previous tasks in one way or another. Our latest one was putting up the towers for the treehouse which is now complete and looks like so much fun!

Our main task last night however was to fill some gabion walls with rubble and sand and then later down the line they will be topped with soil and have wildflowers growing all over. Myra's visions are always AMAZING so I know it's going to look awesome when it's done!

We had four cages to fill and dozens of bags full of sand and rubble to start filling them with. Each cage needed a person to be inside to help press the rubble against the edges and keep the sand in the centre. After about 15 minutes, all the bags had been emptied and it was looking FAB!!

The last job was to move some old rubber mats to underneath the treehouse to stop kids from sliding on the muddy grass when thrashing around.

We had a quick photo up in the treehouse and then we were done!!

Fartleks!

We headed over to Millwall Park for a quick group speed session. The lap is pretty much bang on 800m in length and lit the whole way making it a great place to go for some winter intervals, or wintervals. In last night's case, we did some fartleks, which basically is just a fancy word for running at different speeds for varying lengths of time. You can do this yourself when you're next out on a run too by just saying to yourself ok I'm going to run fast to the bench or jog for 5 minutes and then run fast for 2 minutes or run at a medium/steady pace until I next see a dog.. you can have fun with it and it can spice up a boring training run any day of the week!

After two continuous laps we ran back to the uni for a stretch :)

Community Missions

Two wonderful community missions coming up prepping food, cooking and serving to the public! One of which is tomorrow so sign up asap if you can make that! Info is here:

Good Food Pop Up Kitchen at Woolwich Community Centre

Surplus Feast at the Woolwich Winter Warmer

Upcoming Group Runs

Sign up to the next couple of group runs here too! Let's keep these numbers up through the winter!

Helping out at Christchurch School next Wednesday and Flyering for the Made In Greenwich Shop the following week!

Parkrun

We will be at Southwark Parkrun this Saturday 9am for Ben Cooper's 50th Parkrun so hopefully you can join us for a free timed 5k! You can walk, run, jog, volunteer, it's up to you!

Great work last night as always guys and girls! As I mentioned I won't be here for the next two weeks but there will be two wonderful run leaders covering so please be as helpful as you can! Especially for the second week as I don't think Nicky has been to a Greenwich run before so look after her and I'll see you on December 11th!

19 runners ran faster than a snail to help with some gardening at More 2 Childcare!

The first run since the clocks have changed but still a wonderful turn out for GoodGym Greenwich! Nice work team!

We had a nice summery task planned at More 2 Childcare featuring lots of work in the garden- weeding, soil spreading, sweeping, pruning... the whole shabang!!

After a quick warm up we headed down Trafalgar Road and arrived a few minutes later greeted by the lovely Glenda who showed us inside. What everyone was really thinking was "where's the snail" but that would have to wait, we had work to do first!

Glenda showed us out into the garden/play area where we would be helping out. There were various trees and vines that needed cutting back and pulling quite literally from out of the gutter, there were 6 big bags of soil to spread in the raised beds, lots of weeding to be done, sweeping leaves and then bagging all of the cuttings! Lots to be getting on with! As usual, everyone grabbed some gloves and whatever tools they could lay their hands on and got cracking!

The last two times we visited here, one of our jobs was to paint the Wendy house.. on the first go it was dark, very much like it was tonight which meant that we had to redo it when we returned a few months later since it ended up being a little, shall we say... patchy! Thankfully, it didn't appear on the list of tasks tonight! Probably because they couldn't trust us with it.

After half an hour the place was looking DELIGHTFUL! There was just time for one more thing.....

Sid

Sid is a giant African land snail that lives at the nursery. We all piled into the classroom to say hello. He was a little shy to start with, probably because he was busy tucking into his cucumber dinner when we so rudely interrupted him but eventually he... (sorry I'm going to say it)... came out of his shell.

After some nice snail strokes it was time to put him back and head back to base!

Time Trial Revival

Now, we didn't really celebrate Halloween tonight, but I thought I'd give everyone a bit of a fright by bringing back the 1k TT we used to do back in the day. We used to do it the first Wednesday of every month and then it kind of just dwindled away and fizzled out and I think everyone was just glad that I forgot about it! Anyway.. top running all round! And word on the street is that Darryl ran his fastest ever K so there you go, it's good to do every now and again!! Congrats D-man.

A nice little stretch and we were done :)

Christmas Dinner!

Here is the link for the meal choices and menu for our Christmas Dinner happening on Friday 13th December. You should have already received an email from Alex with his bank details to transfer the £10 deposit, if not then just let either me or him know! Deadline is THIS Sunday! We'd love to have you there, it's always such a merry evening celebrating a wonderful year of running and good deeding!

Great work tonight everyone!! See you all again next week!