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!

18 amazing runners ran 5km to help clear leaves at St George's church in Westcombe Park!

It was the first GoodGym Greenwich group run of the year and we welcomed 3 new runners to the group! Well done Lucy, Darius and Sophie on your first good deed!

We did a little warm up and then set off up Maze Hill and towards Westcombe Park. After 15 minutes of running, we arrived! But no one was in....

Thankfully, Tim, the vicar, only lives around the corner so was with us in a flash!

He was lovely enough to have made a trip to B&Q and cleared the shop of all their rakes so we could be as efficient as possible... there were A LOT of leaves to get through....

Everyone got to stuck in! We laid out the tarp and starting piling on the leaves. All the rakes were distributed and there was some pretty aggressive raking going on, from Christian in particular. He is in a competition at work to lose 5% of his body weight by the end of February so was determined to get as much of a workout as he could!!!

Those without rakes were stuffing leaves into bin bags and transporting them over to the tarp. The pile was growing by the minute!!!

Leaf mountain!

After half an hour, it was time to go, there were still a few leaves scattered around but we had made a pretty big dent so well done! Andy tied the tarp up, very professionally might I add, we took some photos and waved goodbye to those who were ducking out early to head home... coincidentally avoiding the time trial........!

GG TT

Since it was the first Wednesday of the month yesterday, it means one thing..... TIME TRIAL (for those that want to of course!). It is 1km and just a way for you to see how you are progressing each month, nothing to be worried about :)

So 4 laps of Brin's "Quadrangle of Fun" Strava segment and after a few short minutes, it's done! AMAZING running (and cheering!) by everyone! And great to join in on Andy's victory lap!

A few stretches and then we called it a night!

Great job last night! Well done for getting so many leaves cleared in such a short space of time! It was a big help for Tim and t is much appreciated so thank you! See you next week!