14 lovely runners ran 5km to help at the Mental Health Activity Trust charity shop!

It's that time of year now where it's cold, it's dark, motivation is low and it's all too easy to get home from work and just get into your pjs and eat a mince pie. But you resisted and got out there to go for a run and get your good deed in, so well done!!!

WHAT IS GOING ON OVER THERE?

Nearly everyone who arrived last night greeted the group not with a hello, but with a "what's happening over there?!"....!!! Chan made up some rumours it was Daniel Craig filming James Bond but turns out it was a Bollywood ad! But still, we made the most of their HUGE sky light and tried our best to be extras in the film.

We were joined by one new runner last night, the lovely Gosia who is a GoodGym tourist aiming to complete all the London GoodGym group runs! Only 3 to go! So close!!! Hopefully as someone who quite literally has seen them all, Greenwich is up there in the top 3 :) I mean, top 1 would be great, but I'll take top 3.

We did a little warm up as usual and then headed up the hill along the side of the park and arrived at the MHA Trust a short while later.

We were greeted by Toni and piled into the shop trying not to let the cat in! Toni had a list of things for us to do which included moving some concrete filled plant pots needed from the front of the building to the back for the winter, some clothes needed mending and the shop needed an all round clean, hoover and mop!

Bliss represented the ladies in the heavy lifting team whilst surprisingly no lads volunteered for the sewing job! It's ok, maybe next time.

After 25 mins, all the plant pots had been moved, the twins had swept up all the mess outside, the shop was super neat and tidy, buttons had been re-sewn onto garments, and the floor was clean enough to eat your Christmas dinner off.

Time for the charity shop classic pic of "grab a thing" and this shop seemed to have an abundance of hats so everyone reached for some headgear, stuck a hand in the air and the end result is wonderful!

We ran back to the uni and just about had time for a few short sprints, I've never actually seen Alex so disgusted in all my life! But after 3 hard efforts, we were done!!!

GoodGym Greenwich Christmas!

Just as a quick reminder, Alex is confirming numbers for our Greenwich xmas dinner so please vote here! Will be good to get as many of you there as possible :)

Thanks for all your hard work last night! Toni was super appreciative of everything you did, it helps her out so much, so really well done! See you next week!

17 runners (+1 dinosaur) ran 5km to clean up at the Mental Health Activity Trust!

It was a pretty cold and miserable start to the evening, so much so that we had to move our starting location to get a bit of shelter! We are not used to having rain on a Wednesday night in Greenwich! But it didn't matter because last night, everyone turned up looking like a ray of sunshine (literally) in celebration of our biggest, best and brightest star turning 50! CONGRATULATIONS ALEX!!!

Alex has showed up to 49 runs so far wearing a bright yellow jacket and backwards cap so we all decided to do the same for the big 5-0... Except last night was THE ONE TIME he decided not to wear his cap! Good job I brought a spare eh!

We welcomed one new runner to the group, the lovely Nathan who probably thought we were all extremely weird with everything that was going on. Nathan, it's not usually this strange, I hope you will be back when normal service resumes next week! Yaz returned again after her first run last week and Tom made a comeback after becoming a hipster and moving to Dalston. Great to have you back guys!!

I couldn't quite keep it together during the intro speech due to some interesting noises coming from a nearby person but I got there in the end and we went to drop off our stuff. However before the warm up could commence, we had a special superman ceremony for our superhero Alex. He got down on one knee (I felt like I was about to be proposed to) and Ben knighted him with a beautiful flowing red cape that definitely didn't resemble little red riding hood in any way.....

Here comes M-Rex!

A few minutes later, out popped our favourite dinosaur, Mridulasaurus Rex! She attempted the warm up and did a pretty good job considering how constricted her limbs were! After a few minutes of running around we were good to go! We said bye to the dino and headed through the park, up the hill (sorry) and had a group photo at the top. Alex got knocked over by a dog, which, now I come to think about it, was probably attracted to his red cape!

The hardest part of the run over, we just had a little bit left to go before we got to the shop! We were greeted by Toni who sadly informed us that we would have to hold off on the gardening project a little longer, but it was fine because there was loads that needed doing in the shop. Mridula and Linda got their sewing kits out to fix some holes in various garments. Christian took a break from his day job so gave up his vacuuming duties to James which brought back memories of his first time... loud and scratchy.

Everyone else grabbed some kitchen roll and cleaned shelves, windows, glass, mirrors, cabinets.. everything! After 20 minutes, it was looking as dazzling as we did in our fluoro jackets! We took a photo outside with the second animal of the evening (a super cute cat) and headed back towards the uni... downhill yay!

I think we (read: I) may have lost a few people....

We arrived back and Deb, Tom and Yaz were nowhere to be seen. I had sent them off ahead to go a bit faster and Deb & Tom knew the local area so it didn't even occur to me that they could get lost. The rest of us arrived back, did a fitness session and they were still not back..... They SURELY couldn't have got lost could they?!?! But they COULD have got locked in the park.... oops. Just as we were finishing the session, they showed up in the nick of time! They got a lift back from the park guy because they DID get locked in hahahaha! Well at least you didn't have to scale that awful fence! Plus you got an extra km or two in! NICE!

We had a stretch and went to get our stuff. Greenwich goodies this week were in the form of some AMAZING dinosaur cupcakes baked by the dinosaur herself. How does she make them THAT nice and fluffy and MOIST?! Thankfully there were some left over, which a few of us had our eyes on for desert after dinner ;)

PUB TIME!

We headed to the pub for dinner and drinks. Steve had kindly prepared a lovely little quiz book for us (with my favourite photo ever as the front cover) which involved some nice embarrassing moments for Alex. Everyone did surprisingly well at the Which Twin game! Even with the photos which were pretty tough but we clearly know our Alex! :)

Thanks for coming last night everyone!! Congratulations again to Alex for doing so many amazing good deeds in the borough! You really are a hero! Good luck to Gareth, George, James and me (ha!) running the Hackney half on Sunday. Have a lovely rest of the week and see you next Wednesday!!!