After what felt like one of the wettest days in January, the rain thankfully held off for our 15 dedicated runners. Good effort guys!! Luckily Chan came prepared for all eventualities with her umbrella hat and sunglasses just incase.

Firstly, as Sarah was away sunning herself in Thailand, and with Thai food being a very popular take-away choice, what better way to start the evening by getting everyone to think about their favourite take-away dish to get the tummy rumbling.

Quickly taking our minds off food(if only for a moment or two) we warmed up with a quick round of Indian file, running in circles with the person at the back sprinting to the front, hopefully no-one got too dizzy!

Slap dash down trafalgar road - trying not to take too much notice of allllll the take-aways on offer, we arrived at The Greenwich & Bexley Hospice Community Charity shop to be greeted by Jane and Lee. Just a bit of a general tidy up and clothes tagging was needed, so the team split into 3 groups, upstairs, downstairs and tagging. Very efficient and great work by all. Alex's hoovering was on point, what a transformation. Spick and span, almost ready to head back, but not before the essential 'grab your favourite item' shot and a bulk purchase of CDs by Andy.

Another dash straight down Trafalgar road, heading for the Cutty Sark, no one could imagine the treat that was in store for them in the fitness session. Splitting into 4 groups of; squats, tricep dips, step-ups and sprints around the boat, rotating around after the sprinters had completed 2 rounds of the ship. Incredible effort put in by all, and to think Sam was ready to head home after the charity shop and miss out on all that fun (or was it the Greenwich Goodies that kept you sweet?).

Well done everyone, really great input throughout the whole night, but fear not!! Normal business will resume next week as Sarah will be back to fill us in on her adventures, and maybe even her favourite eats. Now who's hungry?? Until next time! *Pun credit goes to Alex

20 lovely runners ran 5km to help out at the amazing MEfA Montessori!

Well it was FREEEEEZING this evening but a whopping 20 Greenwich folk made it out for their weekly good deed! Nice one!!!

We had one new runner this evening, the lovely Claire who is just coming back to running after a knee operation last year and did absolutely brilliantly - well done Claire! Hope you enjoyed the first session! And we also welcomed Chloe who came along to the starter session on Saturday :)

After a little warm up running around in all sorts of directions we headed off! The Montessori is located up in Westcombe Park which involves a litttttle bit of a hill but as I always say, what goes up must come down!

We arrived at the Montessori and were greeted by the loveliest of ladies, the amazing Wendy! You can tell she is an education professional as she has the most calm and perfect manner! Love her!

Anyway, enough about my love for Wendy.... so we split into groups. A few people headed outside to tackle the pesky ivy. A small bathroom needed painting so a few people squuuuuueeeeeeezed in there. Whilst the bulk of the group organised and sorted a whole load of books!

After just half an hour, the books had all been sorted, put into piles and ticked off Mr Rogers's list! Meanwhile the twins were getting more paint on themselves than on the walls.... wouldn't want to be doing your washing at the weekend guys! Hope the paint comes out alright... although it definitely has the proper GoodGym look about it now!

The gardeners outside were also just about done, except Dom was just wrestling with one thick bit of tree trunk... don't worry we will come back for it another time! They brought through 4 bin liners jam packed full of ivy and other garden waste so you can definitely be proud of that!!

Light up hat!

We all gathered outside for a group photo and this is where we discovered THE most amazing invention probably ever??? Andy's amazing cap with a built in head torch!!!! Whack one of those on your birthday list guys and girls! Mind blown!!!

Sadly we didn't have time for a fitness session but you've all worked pretty hard these last few weeks so thought you deserved a little recovery week! You're welcome :) We headed back to the uni, had a little stretch and parted ways!

Well done tonight everyone! Great work on the task, and well done for getting so stuck in. If you want to find out any more information on the Montessori then have a look here. As I said I'm not here next week but Vickie is taking over so I'm sure you'll be in for a treat! See you in a few weeks!

23 runners ran 4km to help out at Clothes 4 Causes charity shop!

A great start to the year so far from GoodGym Greenwich! We had 4 new runners join us last night, Finn, James, Ophelia and Mahim... welcome all! Hope you had a good first run with us!

The grand opening of Greenwich Zoo!

With a shorter run on our hands, we had a little bit of extra time to have some fun in the warm up! We played a little game where everyone was given a bit of paper with an animal on it and then you had to run around acting like the animal with the aim being to try and find the other person in the group who is the same animal as you! Lots of moo-ing, baa-ing, squeaking, neighing, barking and hissing going on... now I know how Noah felt on his ark... crikey! After a couple of rounds, we headed off on our run!

I forgot to take a group snap the beginning so we stopped along the river with a lovely lit up London skyline as the backdrop... beautiful! Then we continued our journey and arrived at the shop a few moments later.

We were greeted by Veronique who sadly broke the news to us that they had recently been flooded so had to move out a lot of the clothes that we were meant to be sorting. Instead everyone got stuck in with tidying the shop, making sure everything was nice and neat and in colour order. There was also loads of rubbish from the downstairs room which needed bringing upstairs to be collected by a man (or lady!) in a van tomorrow!

Amongst the rubbish were a few wicker baskets which looked far too good to throw away and were quickly snapped up by Nina and Marta! And the only price they had to pay was running back carrying them! Not bad!

15 minutes of tidying and sorting and we were done! It doesn't take long when you have 46 helping hands!

Strides!

We ran back the way we came, past the Cutty Sark and a little further along the river where there was a nice long straight, perfect for our fitness session which consisted of 5x 20s of strides with jog back recoveries! This is something you can do once or twice a week at the end of a run and it will really help improve your running form. If you want to read a little bit more about it and the benefits, have a look here. All you need is a nice straight bit of road! Give it a try next time and let me know how you get on!

After everyone was suitably puffed, we headed back to the uni for a cool down stretch and called it a night!!!

FB group

For you 4 lovely new runners, please feel free to join our GoodGym Greenwich Facebook Group where you can find out what other people are up to. We've got loads of Greenwich runners doing all sorts of races which you can of course get involved in as well! Christian has managed to get us 10% discount for the 10k race in Greenwich Park and we're getting a good crowd together so feel free to join!

Well done last night everyone! Top work on the task and great running all round!! See you next week!