We welcomed a new runner here at GoodGym King's last night - give Alex a cheer everyone, he deserves it for using his run to do good for the first time! It was also Clare's 50th good deed - that means that instead of working out on a treadmill, or running around the park, she has used her run to help other people 50 times. She's weeded gardens, handed out food to the homeless and moved furniture for older people and local organisations - what a woman, give her a cheer!

After telling Alex all about missions and coach runs, and going through some news about the shindig and our amazing GoodGym/New Balance Marathon runners Katie and Chris, we learned about our task for the evening. We were taking donations over to St John's Church Waterloo for their weekly food and toiletries collection for the homeless. With the KCL campus very quiet for the month (lecturer strikes over pension payments), unfortunately we did get many donations from students and staff this time around, however Danny saved the day and managed to bring a haul along with him - great work and I'm sure it's going to be much appreciated!

We split the donations up between us and headed out over Blackfriars bridge to make sure we got a bit of a longer run in. With the evenings getting lighter, it's certainly getting busier out on those London streets so we had to make sure we watched where we stepped and gave pedestrians lots of space. After a quick 2.5km run there we reached the church and dropped off all our donations. We also told the staff there all about GoodGym, so they know that we we come back next time we can also help with lots of other tasks they might need a hand with.

As it was such a quick task we had plenty of time for a long workout in the King's Sport Health and Fitness Gym. We did a few rounds of circuits - each round consisted of 3 different exercises that we did for 30 seconds each, followed by a 30 seconds rest. This was repeated 3 times before moving onto the next round with new exercises. We focussed on our lower half, working all our leg muscles and our glutes.

After lots of strong squat variations and golden glute bridges, our legs were feeling it, but we still made time for a quick plank-off, which our new runner, Alex, won! We did a couple of stretches for our abs, after all that planking, before heading back to base. We could only remember the name of the yoga pose we did when I got home - CAMEL!

See you next week for some more doing good and getting fit.

Have a great hump day everyone!

Tonight we visited St John’s Waterloo to drop off some items for their food collection that they do for the homeless on Wednesdays. We also managed to run about 3km and practice our running technique.

We had three new runners tonight - Catarina, Katrien, and Helen – give them a cheer for using their run tonight to do some good in the community! We heard all about the GoodGym Social happening on Thursday at the Square Pig in Holborn – so close for us. We also celebrated Gosia’s fab mission (which you can see the report for here) from the weekend and her CRUK Winter Run Race, plus Mara’s amazing feat at achieving almost 30km already so far in Feb.

We ran out over Blackfriars Bridge, laden with our goodies, featuring nappies, toothpaste, pasta, cous cous and a can of ready-sliced carrots for the collection, arriving at the church in great time.

The task: We had to enter the church nice and quietly so we didn’t disturb any services going on, and left our small haul in the reception area box ready for some volunteers to sort out the next day with the rest of their food collection items. All the food is being used to support some of the homeless communities in Lambeth.

For our fitness session today we focussed on our running technique, working on the drive and flight phases of our strides. After lots of walks, skips and fast feet up and down in the park, we were ready to make our way back to King’s. We split into two groups with Dom leading the group with the shorter run back over Waterloo bridge and Gosia wonderfully back-marking the group with the longer run back over Blackfriars Bridge. The longer-run group must have been going with some serious pace as we managed to just about beat the other group back.

We made the most of our early arrival back at King’s by doing 3 sets of core triathlons, which if you want to try at home is as follows:

• 20s of “swimming” planks

• 20s of bicycle abs

• 20s of mountain climbers

• 20s rest

Join us next week for Sustainability week at King’s, where we will be planting some trees at Oasis Farm Waterloo!