3 Goodgymmers from across the London boroughs met up with the Achilles International team for our weekly guide running meet-up last night. The group will meet up at Green Park Underground Station every Thursday at 6pm, before enjoying a social run around the park, up and down the Mall and past Buckingham Palace!

Claire and Seb were fully on board with trying their hand at VI running for the first time, and were total naturals. VI runners Maki and Andrew are both training for London Marathon in October, and are hugely appreciative of the assistance offered by regular running guides for training.

We will be back again next week. Please feel free to sign up here if you would like to give VI guiding a try!

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/come-and-guide-run-with-achilles-international-67127674-b8ef-49ed-892c-283f7466f250

23 runners ran 4km to plant 160 saplings at The Bridge!

Another week and another lovely evening with a summer like temperature as well. The Goodgym Greenwich gang welcomed new runner Matt last night and during our raucous briefing and welcome we were asked to move on as our voices were louder than a choir concert happening inside the Naval College.

After a very quick warm up we were off for another opportunity to run inside Greenwich Park. We were promised that we would do the whole hill, however we certainly managed the mean section of Maze Hill!

We were rewarded for our up hill struggle with a downhill path and swiftly arrived at The Bridge and got to task on planting 16 varieties of trees, weeding and other maintenance. Most of the team began preparing pots for the trees to go in while Claire and Sara carefully wrote out the labels for each variety - a Goodgym task anomaly.

The saplings were planted in their new homes and the labels were assigned to their correct pots. The team weeding had made a massive improvement to the flower beds outside the centre and we were all rewarded with biscuits and squash.

The group set off back to the naval college and finished with a quick leg strength session of squats and lunges - and we were careful to avoid the concert and making a reputation for ourselves as troublemakers.

Great work everyone! Ruth was SO pleased with all the work you managed to do, it would have taken her hours and hours so huge well done to you all for working so hard!!

17 runners ran 3km to shift soil at Westcombe Woodlands!

It was a glorious evening for a run. We welcomed new runner Rachael to the gang and a jetlagged set of twins for their first run back after their US adventure! Oh and Claire and Seb had also just returned from a nice long hols in Sri Lanka... welcome back to lovely Greenwich everyone!

The run last night was to a new place for some. We helped tidy up some flower beds at Maze Hill station a few months back and a few members of the group went to Westcombe Woodlands back then, but last night it was everyone's turn to check out the woods!

It had already started getting dark by the time we left. As we arrived at the task the headtorches came out!

We met Rich who is part of the East Greenwich Residents Association and organised this task for us in the lovely woodlands! Our first job was to hike soil up to some beds which were up a steep hill and multiple steps, a lot easier when you have two people to a wheelbarrow like we did! A bunch of people got on with that whilst the others filled buckets with top soil to go to the flower beds by the Vanbrugh.

Once the buckets were filled, they were put in a van and driven whilst half of the group jogged behind it to unload and level it all off! LOVELY!

By this point, lots of trips up and down the hill had been made to the flower bed high in the sky and the place was looking great. The Vanbrugh group arrived back and started filling bags with sand and loading up the van again. These are to be used for our task next week at Christchurch school!

After about half an hour we had emptied a whole bag of soil! Andy and the crew were making some final adjustments up the hill with some last minute soil application and then we were ready to go!

We headed out the Woodlands, up the hill and then down towards the river back to the uni. We had time for a quick little fitness session (since it was National Fitness Day after all!) and called it a night!

Great work last night and well done getting so stuck in! You got so much done, it would have taken Rich hours to do what you did in 30 minutes! See you all next week!

21 awesome runners ran 4km to help out at St Mark's Church!

Lots of new runners with us again last night, we were joined by Camden runner Liz, GG Bexley runner Emily and there was also a bit of recruitment going on which is FAB! Carla and Julie's brought their colleague Linda and Claire brought Seb along, welcome to the gang everyone!

We found out about everyone's upcoming holiday plans, or lack of in Ben and Neil's cases! And then headed off for a little warm up including some backwards running which apparently burns 20% more calories than forwards running, who knew?! Apparently it actually has loads of benefits! Also some inchworms to warm up the core and stretch out the legs. After a few minutes we were good to go.

We set off along the river taking the slightly longer way round passing through Greenwich station for a change! A few minutes later and we had arrived and were greeted by the lovely and ever enthusiastic Tony who, as always, had everything organised and ready for us. There was some sweeping leaves and general tidying out the front but the main job was sorting out the jungle in the back garden! There are plans to make it into a children's play area so all the weeds, vines, brambles, EVERYTHING had to be ripped out and bagged up.

Everyone grabbed a fork, a shovel, a tool of some sort and some gloves and got stuck in! There was also lots of weeds and leaves and litter to be bagged up just outside the gate so lots to be getting on with!

We got to admire the big bunches of grapes that had been set free last time we were here and were growing nicely! Maybe one day we will see a bottle of the finest Greenwich wine on our shelves.

After 20 minutes, the ladies out the front had done a spectacular job of clearing up. The leaf grabber once again making life a lot easier. Everyone out the back had bagged up a whole load of stuff and the place had totally transformed. We had just about enough time to level off the surface and then it was bin bags to bins and tools back round to Tony's car! AMAZING job everyone!!!

We had a little photo and then set off back through the park to the uni for a quick little fitness session involving some 200m sprints and some planking! This is a super handy video to nail the perfect plank if you want to keep practicing on your own, check it out. After a couple of minutes we were done! We finished off with a little stretch and then called it a night :)

Great job everyone! What a transformation in such a short space of time! Incredible as always, well done! See you next week!