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!!!

18 awesome runners ran 4km to help tidy up St Mark's Church!

After two weeks away it was great to be back! We welcomed a new runner to the group, Matt, who usually runs with Bexley and is a London Overground train driver... cool!!

It was also cause for celebration as the wonderful Elle was about to complete her 50th good deed!!!! I'm sure we can all agree it's been an absolute DELIGHT having Elle on our runs over the past 18 months and, as with everyone that seems enter this group, her running has gone from strength to strength and I am beyond excited to see what she pulls out of the bag at the Paris Marathon 2020! Such a bright running future ahead of you Elle and keep up the good deeding of course! Here's to the next 50!

We were slightly delayed getting the bags in the room so we just did a few laps to warm us up and then headed straight for St Mark's. We stopped for a few Christmassy snaps along the way and arrived at the church moments later, greeted by the always organised and ever enthusiastic, Tony Othen! He explained that the church was being turned into a polling station, well a DOUBLE polling station actually. The one up the road is closed so St Mark's will be expecting twice as many visitors and so it was even more important to tidy up and make the entrance clear and safe for all the lovely voters!

Our main job was simply clearing and bagging up all the leaves from the front and side of the building. We split up into two groups, grabbed various shovels, leaf grabbers, rakes, brooms and bin bags and starting filling 'em up!

After just 20 minutes, the place had been transformed. The group working on the right side were done and relocated themselves to just around the corner and cleared up around there too. All the leaves were gone, time for one last quick sweep up and then to find Tony for a photo!

After packing all the tools back in the shed, we headed off for some hill reps up Point Hill, since our run to the church was fairly short. Four times up and down and we called it a night! NICE ONE TEAM!!

Parkrun

Details for this Saturday's Parkrun can be found here. You can walk, jog, run or volunteer to be a marshal/timer/barcode scanner/tailwalker etc so there is something for everyone! We'll grab some breakfast and coffee after too :)

Great work last night everyone! What a transformation! I'll see most of you on Friday for our Christmas bash and we have one more group run left this year so get signed up and let's see out 2019 with a bang!