12 runners ran to Charlton House to pick up flyers for a local community art exhibition.

On a very windy but pleasant Wednesday evening, 12 runners rocked up to take on the unusually longer distance to pick up and distribute flyers.

After a brief intro by yours truly (come home Sarah, we need you back!!) we did a quick warm up before heading through the glorious Greenwich Park. First pit stop at the top of the park for a family photo as it was such a lovely evening.

Don't get lost.

Onwards to Charlton House... when arriving, myself and Ben had to convince the receptionist that we knew exactly what we were doing, a quick check and he passed over a huge bunch of flyers. Now, off we went in search of the best streets which had adequate homes/flats/apartments/bungalows down both sides of the road. Splitting into 2 teams Ben lead one group and the other half relayed down a parallel street. Meeting at the end of each road so as not to loose anyone, this was not the case, Matt and Chan got carried away, but alas, we were soon reunited.

As time wasn't on our side, we quickly distributed the final flyers and dived back into Greenwich Park to enjoy the spectacular sunset over London.

What a view.

Great effort all, it was a longer than usual run and everyone did amazing to get all the flyers handed out. See you all next week when usual service will be resumed as Sarah's back!!

It was a lovely sunny evening in SE10, and with our running coach, Sarah, literally on the other side of the world it was chance for all of us to top up on our tans.

Unfortunately not, diligent as she is, Sarah had left Vickie and myself strict instructions , and there was to be absolutely no lazing about. Sorry.

To start, we went round the circle and said our name, and the word we most overused. (For those that attended, how many can you count in this report?) Most interestingly Nina couldn't think of one word; she likes all words and uses them freely ;-)

As a warm-up game we played dishes and domes. On one foot, it's a good game to promote agility, balance and coordination, and on the other foot, it can seem a bit of a futile pursuit as you turn over a cone, and then immediately thereafter someone from the opposing team turns it back over. The game seemed to trigger an existential crisis for some people. Indeed, after the three minutes of the game had elapsed, it transpired it was a dead tie. 11 domes. 11 dishes. So, you really have to question what was the point? *(Note to self: to avoid a tie in future use an odd number of cones.) *

What if...there is a tie? Well, Rob and David faced off in cone sprint decider to win to their team's honour. A dramatic slide from David clinched the golden cone. Nice!!!

We decided to hug the river to get to our new task. We were going rogue as we were just stepping over the borough boundary into Lewisham, so wanted to keep a low profile, ignoring our bright red coloured tees.

Tonight's task took us to St Nicholas Church, Deptford Green. Despite the imposing skull and crossbones entrance we dared to entered. Also, it was quite light so there really was little to be afraid of.

Maureen, the church warden met us. WWS. Watering, weeding and sweeping were the order of the day. We broke up into groups. The weeders, on their hands and knees, worked nimbly and mindfully. Lee, pictured with a hose, is never happier than when in a garden, was heard whistling as he watered the plants. And Ophelia and Sara swept the ghosts away.

Good work everyone. The churchyard was looking on point.

Note: It is a beautiful churchyard, and well worth a visit.

Feeling adventurous still, we went under the foot tunnel to Island Gardens to do our fitness sessions. I boomed out my playlist of two songs: 1) James - Sit Down and 2) The Police - Roxanne. Suffice to say, it was a squat session!!! However, in the instrumental section people didn't seem to quite know what to do with themselves. There was a forced awkwardness, except for Rob who just danced the whole way through it. Magic.

At the end of the day, running wouldn't have its reward if you didn't stop every so often to take in the views. Boom times.

Happy running everyone,

Ben

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!

As the rain came down, 26 waterproof wonders ran 5km to plant hedging, fruit trees and to create a new path in Hither Green.

Did you see that rain from your sofa?! We didn't just see it, we embraced it! That's what it's all about. When you're part of this team (family?), you sign up and you come, rain or shine (or snow and ice recently!). Well done everyone for turning out on a grotty, misty, murky evening. Joining us tonight, for his first run in Lewisham (having made his debut over in Greenwich last week), was David, give him lots of Lewisham Love!

I might have been stalling slightly, not wishing to venture outside, but I also had a lot to cover in my pre-run briefing tonight, after another amazing weekend of racing. Of course, some of our racers were having a well-earned rest (apart from Conroy, who made it out tonight!), so we celebrated in their absence.

• A very big congratulations to Sarah, who ran the Manchester Marathon yesterday, bagging herself an 18 minute PB, amazing!

• Well done also to Nykolette and Conroy, who ran the Croydon Half-Marathon in That Rain. We also gave a big cheer to Bradley here, for standing around for over two hours to support them and even joining Conroy on the road, to run the last mile with Nykolette, encouraging her all the way.

• There was also a bit of sociable running going on, with Caireen, Lucy and Jacqueline going on a Gin Run, learning about the history of gin and, well, enjoying a tipple at the end!

Let's get physical

Our warm-up saw us playing a little game of 'Everyone's It', with some nice squatting thrown in. We also did some dynamic work to get our bodies ready to run. Thank you to Clare for being tonight's back-marker, keeping us together and making sure nobody was left behind. Before long, we were approaching the wonderful Springbank Road Community Garden, where we had a lovely task last summer, when it was in full, colourful bloom - tonight it was looking particularly lush! Straight away, Anne-Marie set-to, telling everyone about the different jobs and handing out tools and equipment to enable us to do these jobs safely. As we were working partly on the station embankment, we had hi-vis and a good old H&S briefing (this is where I get my serious voice on and do a bit of shushing). Once we were split into three groups, we went our separate ways to:

• dig over and create a new path in the Springbank Road Community Garden. This will now be covered in membrane and then gravel, to allow volunteers to move easily within the space.

• planting native hedging (including hawthorn and sloe) along the Hither Green Station embankment, with a swift action that involved digging with a trowel, popping in the 'plug', placing a bamboo and wrapping and protecting it all with a plastic tube.

• planting three large fruit trees on the embankment on the other side of the track, with a great deal of (weird and random) litter needing to be cleared before the digging and planting could be done - has anyone in the HG area lost a tin of chicken soup, unopened, sell-by date 2019?

Treemendous!

With everyone spread around the vicinity, I jogged between the spaces, making sure people were safe, engaged and also taking plenty of photos (thank you to Kim and Emma for some of tonight's photos). Once we had gathered our tools, handed back (reluctantly?) the hi-vis, paired the gloves and eaten some biscuits (thank you A-M!) it was time to go. We will be coming back here during the Hither Green Festival in May, so sign up if you want to see how the garden has grown.

Our run back down the hill was a drizzly one, but we were very soon back at Glass Mill, where I broke it to the group that it was time for a trial, our 'monthly' time trial. It's been a while and our run was short enough to leave sufficient energy to push around Cornmill Gardens, right? When you consider how slippery it was, how hard everyone had worked at the task and how down right grim the weather was, it was particularly impressive to see you all push so determinedly around the (almost) km course, well done! If you want to see the Strava segment and check out the leaderboard, have a look here.

Next week, we will return to our friends at the delightful Seniors, expect a longer run of around 8km (with views), a variety of indoor and outdoor tasks and possibly a post-run social to wish all the best to our friend Chris. Good luck on Sunday, to our Brighton Marathon runners Hannah, Chris, Eleanor and Chris. It's a super-friendly race, with great support and I heartily recommend stepping out of your running shoes at the end and dipping your tired feet in the sea.

:)