We had so many fresh faces on our run this week - Marina, Stephanie, Glen and Gabriele - give these people a cheer everyone!

Did you know that we have a GoodGym-wide challenge happening this month? We want to get to 5000 good deeds and 50,000kms run across the whole of GoodGym in January. Our run tonight has currently put us in the lead of our division. However to keep our lead we do need to keep racking up the good deeds and those miles, so make sure you link your Strava and GoodGym profiles together and go out for some training runs, or ask me about getting DBS checked so you can get involved in some missions!

After find out what GoodGym is all about, welcoming all our newcomers, and meeting David - our Guest from Bristol - we locked up our bags and went outside for a warm up. We discussed what everyone wants to have made happen by the end of the year and with lots of answers to do with running we headed out into the cold night!

With some excellent back marking from Amy, we headed out over Blackfriars Bridge and made it to Blackfriars Settlement in record time.

The task: We met some of the awesome people working at the Centre and they gave us a brief history about the place - it was originally a women's university settlement, set up in 1887! They then set us to work in three groups - The pine-eers, Fairy's on top and Feeling pine. Each group had their own Christmas tree to take down, and it was a race to see who could get all the decorations off and packed into boxes, plus get the tree wrapped up, first. Fairy's on top were the over-all winners and they even managed to take down all the decorations in the stairwell too.

Once finished we split into two groups for the run back. The sexy and steady group were led by Dom, and the (after much consideration) stupid and speedy group were led back by me. Sexy and steady set off first, and the other group then tried to catch up with them on the run back. We didn't make it however, and so sexy and steady won the race! With a few minutes to spare we did some core work back at base to make sure we have good posture when running.

Great running!

See you next week when we will be sorting donations for the YMCA charity shop.

Last night King's College London was overrun with GoodGym t-shirts and people looking to do good. We had a short but busy run, followed by a hands-on sorting task and finally a casual run back to base, but not before stopping for a quick fitness session.

For our first ever run at King's we were joined by five fresh faces, attending their first ever GoodGym group run - Sam, Daniela, Jessica, Bojan and Siying - give them a cheer everybody! We also had lots of GoodGym tourists coming to explore life here at King's (or perhaps they were just here for a cheap pint at the SU bar afterwards!).

After a quick introduction and hearing about missions and coach runs, we set off outside to do a short warm up and find out everyone's favourite hot drink to warm themselves up with when they're at home. Coffee definitely took top spot with our crew.

The run there

We headed out on our short 1.5km jog over Waterloo bridge, and due to all the road works it was slow going, but as soon as we made it over the other side we picked up the pace. On the way there we discussed how everyone first heard about GoodGym and showed off our GoodGym T-shirts to the passers-by, so hopefully they will join some group runs in the future. We managed to dodge all the commuters and arrived at Blackfriars Settlement, ready to get stuck into the mammoth task they had waiting for us.

The task

We were greeted at Blackfriars Settlement, a community centre and activity provider, by the lovely Eileen, who showed us into their activity room. Behind the closed door at the back of the room was a large storage cupboard, filled to the brim with cooking equipment, clothes, decorations, arts and crafts, plus so much more. Our task was to take as much as we could out of the cupboard, sort it all into piles of the same thing, and put it all back in an orderly fashion. It was a lot to do in 25 minutes, but we were up for the challenge. We bagged up all the clothes so they could be donated in a local charity collection, counted the cooking equipment and re-organised the storage cupboard.

Making our way back

We waved farewell to Eileen and Blackfriars Settlement, with promises we would come back one day. We battled Blackfriars bridge for our return journey which was quieter and more peaceful than Waterloo, and made it most of the way back to base before stopping for a quick fitness session. Runners need to work on lots of different muscle groups to improve posture and speed, which is exactly what we did in our speedy circuits. From planking to squats, we had a good workout, followed by a sprint along Embankment. With everyone feeling warm and sweaty we made our way up the steps at Temple and and back to King's for a cool down.

Whilst doing some stretches and talking about what we were planning for dinner, we found out we ran about 4km in total - a great first run at King's!

Great work on the task everybody - see you next week, when we will be heading to the British Legion to help make up some boxes for their Poppy Appeal.