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!

17 lovely runners ran 3km to help out at Christchurch community garden!

Well what a lovely morning that was eh folks! So this was the third starter session in a series of four aimed for runners doing The Big Half in March (but of course everyone and anyone is welcome!). The fourth and final session is on 10th February and you can sign up here!

We had lots of lovely new GoodGym runners today as well as a few familiar faces which is always nice. And lots of people who travelled far and wide to make it over to Greenwich this morning, some all the way from Richmond! Now that is dedicated!!! Hopefully it was worth it.......!

After everyone had dropped off their bags at the gym and emptied their bladders(!) we headed up the stairs, found out what everyone was having for dinner tonight and then did a quick little warm up just down the street before we got going!

We arrived at the church a little under 10 minutes later and were greeted by vicar Andrew who explained a few things which needed doing in the garden. On the whole, it was a general tidy up which included removing all the moss and grass from between the bricks and sweeping up the leaves! Everyone grabbed some gloves and a weapon of choice and got stuck in!

After about 20 minutes the place was looking LOVELY! Those bricks had been set free after being engulfed in moss and were now able to breathe! All the leaves had been swept up and put into a nice pile. Now it was just time to get everything together into a big bag ready to be emptied onto the compost later on.

After all the tools had been put away, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the uni for a fitness session!

We started off with a few partner exercises to target the core muscles, because a strong core means a stronger, faster and more efficient runner! And then we finished off with 3 minutes of continuous running at varying speeds to get used to the feeling of running at different paces rather than just your standard plod which everyone is guilty of! It's something that can easily be incorporated into your training and will make a whole world of difference, I promise you!!!

Once everyone was suitably puffed, we headed back to the gym for a little cool down stretch and called it a day!

Wednesday group run!

As I mentioned, our usual run is on a Wednesday evening, 6.45pm at the Old Royal Naval College. The format is the same as today except the run may be a little further and it's dark because it's in the evening... but it's still fun! You can sign up to Wednesday's run here.

Well done today everyone! It was great seeing you all get so involved with the task and there was some amazing running going on from everybody so you should be really pleased with yourselves! Hopefully see you at another GoodGym run soon! Good luck and enjoy the rest of your training!

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!

15 awesome runners ran 4km to help out at the Royal Hill Community Garden!

It was a freakishly warm evening last night, it had rained on and off for most of the day and it looked like it was going to rain some more.. but it didn't stop 15 of you lovely lot from coming out to run and get a good deed done!

We were joined by 4 new runners last night! AMAZING!! Isabella brought along her friend Balazs, I managed to rope in my friend Sally from the gym I work at, and we were also joined by two more lovely ladies Aimee and Lexy! Welcome to the family everyone! Make sure you join our FB group to keep updated with races and other wonderful things that this awesome group gets up to!

We dropped off our stuff and headed over for a quick warm up and then set off through Greenwich town centre and up to Royal Hill! We were greeted by two lovely gentlemen, Patrick and Jonathan who explained the tasks that needed doing.

Ground force!

There was a flower bed at the front which needed some holes to be dug to make room for some plants so a few people got stuck in with that. Vickie took a small group to the dark outback to rake up some leaves and put them in the compost. And the final group were tasked with a little landscape design project of making a heather bed which involved building a DIY dry stone wall out of bricks and other rubble they could find... Apparently according to Emma, well, Emma's granny, dry stone walling is an actual hobby and you can enroll yourself in a course to learn how to build one as it is quite an art form! But these guys did not need a course in dry stone walling... oh no! They just cracked on and it looked BEAUTIFUL. Alan Titchmarsh better watch his back!

15 minutes later and the group at the front had successfully planted the plants! WOOHOO! Next job was some bulbs to be planted in and around them. Patrick showed them the first one and then left the rest to them!

Everyone was doing a killer job! The leaves had all been swept away. The bulbs had been planted and finally the heather bed was looking absolutely stunning! So it was time to say our goodbyes, have a group photo and head back for some more RUNNING! Yay!

We had a little jog back to the uni and had loads of time to spare! And since the run to the garden wasn't very far, there was more running on the agenda! But that's what you're here for right :)

Laps, laps and more laps!

As I always say, speed work is SO important. I don't do it enough myself. And chances are you probably don't either! If you run 3 times a week, you should try and aim for one of those runs to involve some kind of interval training where your heart rate goes up and comes down multiple times! It gets you faster over time and really pushes your lactate threshold so you can run faster for longer! Which is ultimately what everyone wants, right? So.......

On the cards was 4x 2 laps fast 2 laps slow. 1 lap is approx 300m so to run round it 16 times would be about 4.8km which is a long way! But instead of making everyone do this, we did it for as long as it took the fastest person to complete it. The key to this one is running the fast laps at a pace where you can maybe say about 2 or 3 words at a time so a nice controlled effort and then running the slow ones REAAALLLYY slow as an active recovery.

Long story short... everyone did AMAZING. It was great to see you all really push yourselves and put in so much effort! And of course so great to hear the cheers for our super speedy Amy so everyone could stop! Ha! That was a tough session, probably one of the hardest we've done so newbies please don't be scared off!!!!

We had a nice little stretch and called it a night :)

Thanks so much everyone! You got so much done at the garden and the task owners were SO pleased at what you all achieved so well done! Also great job with those intervals, I know it was hard but you absolutely smashed it!!!! See you next time!