16 amazing runners ran 3km to clear dead trees at Vanbrugh Pits!

A slightly smaller group than usual this evening but it didn't stop us doing maximum amounts of GOOD! We headed to a new task at the top of Maze Hill in a nice little conservation area called Vanbrugh Pits! Some people have run through before but to others it was a new discovery and a nice little wildlife haven nestled on the side of Greenwich Park.

After a photo with our shiny new GoodGym flag we headed on up the hill and met Joe who is the Chair of Greenwich Wildlife Advisory Group. He explained a bit about the area and the many species that have been recently thriving and it was our job to help clear some trees to encourage even more biodiversity!

He had been working with a few volunteers earlier in the day to cut down some gorse and other small trees, and it was our task to clear it to the road for the council to hopefully collect tomorrow!

Before we knew it, it was dark and the head torches came out! Side note: If you haven't got one, I definitely recommend picking one up, it will be a big help in tasks throughout the winter where light is scarce! You can pick one up for less than a fiver in Decathlon I think so well worth the small investment!

After we had cleared all the trees and dead branches to the road, we then started cutting down more trees and clearing the area further. Because these trees grow so much and so quickly, they provide a lot of shade so the plants underneath it can't grow as much which can therefore potentially lead to the loss of some wildlife.

30 minutes later and we were pretty much done! We hauled the last few twigs and branches to the pile that now resembled a decent sized bonfire! AWESOME!!

We took a final photo with some extremely professional looking headtorch lighting and then off we went, down the hill and back to the uni for a stretch! We said our goodbyes to some of the group whilst the rest of us headed for some yummy pizza at Franco Manca to finish off a lovely evening!!

A few reminders of things coming up...

GoodGym Super Saturday is happening THIS WEEKEND! There are community missions up and down the country and all over London. We have even listed one in Greenwich for you to get stuck into so if you're around on Saturday morning and have a spare hour or two then get yourself down to Clothes For Causes charity shop to help them get ready for their new shop launch! And in case you didn't know, you don't need a DBS check for Community Missions, you can just go along whether you are mission verified or not! You can see all the listings and more about the day here.

We are also heading to Hilly Fields Parkrun on Saturday morning as well so please join us if you fancy running up some hills! Or you can volunteer of course!

Great work this evening everyone! Joe was so pleased with what you all achieved in such a short space of time! See you next week!

23 awesome runners ran 3k to help assemble a treehouse at St Lukes School!

We had looooads of new people this evening! Woohoo!! Big welcome to: Jack, Emma, Nick, Eleri, Brad and Arabella! Hope you enjoyed your first run GoodGym Greenwich run!

7 o'clock struck, we did our usual introductions and headed off for a little warm up. After our obligatory group photo we then jogged down to the foot tunnel and moments later arrived at the school! Myra was ready and waiting with her crew of carpenters!

I was told we were going to help build a tree house.. we arrived and 4 towers had already been put together, probably for the best that we weren't tasked with that part ha! Our job however was to stand the towers up and put them in the ground.

Half of the group took to one tower, the other half of the group grabbed the other one and lo and behold within a few short seconds the outline of a treehouse emerged! NICE!

The treehouse was not all though. Other jobs around the school included watering the vegetable patch, hacking down the spiky ball plant, chopping down a rogue tree and sawing the stump away... loads to be getting on with!

After about half an hour we were done! A nice orange barrier had been wrapped around the treehouse area to stop the curious children playing around there, the stump had been removed and covered up nicely with some fresh dirt, the veg had all been watered and the spikey ball plant had well and truly met its match, although it didn't go down without a fight as everyone was covered in it!

It was time to say our goodbyes and head off for a mini fitness session! We went to the lovely Millwall Park and did some short laps increasing our pace along each side. Some VERY speedy runners out there, nice work!! After 3 loops we called it a day and jogged back through the tunnel, back to the uni for a stretch!

Nice work everyone!! We got looooads done and Myra was so pleased with it all, you've been a huge help. Hopefully we'll return in a few weeks and you'll get to see the further progress! Have a great rest of your week! See you next time!

22 awesome runners ran 3km to clean up around Greenwich!

It was a lovely evening for a litter pick run! We had two new runners with us yesterday, big welcome to Tom and Isabelle!

We started as we do every week, going round an introducing ourselves in some abstract way. Yesterday thanks to Haley it was through our mutual love of pizza and our favourite toppings which we were hopeful to consume at our post run social in a few short hours... little did we know at the time that none of those pizza dreams would be realised.

After a little warm up and classic team building exercise, we split into our groups, slipped on our cute gloves and got ready to tackle Greenwich's rubbish hot spots!

We each had 40 minutes to collect as much litter as we could. Our group headed for some carparks because they are always notoriously bad and within minutes our bags were filling up. So many plastic straws, bottles, coffee cups, receipts, takeaway boxes.. it breaks my heart and this place is litter picked on an extremely regular basis (probably daily?!) but it still doesn't stop people just chucking stuff on the floor..... argghhh it grinds my gears. Anyhoo.. 8pm was fast approaching so we made our way back to the uni with our garbage haul and my oh my what a haul it was!

After a quick photo we put everything in the uni bins and did a quick fitness session to finish off.

3 rounds of 10 squats, 10 plank jacks and 1 run around the square and we were done! Pizza was calling. We grabbed our things and headed down the road to Franco Manca, I could almost taste that fresh sourdough crust. YUM.

Access denied

Soooooo unfortunately my booking didn't exist (I'll go in next time and write it in their diary myself) but we didn't let it get us down. The important thing was being together so it didn't matter where we went... plus we were all starving by this point and so settled for a runner's portion of noodles at Noodle Time instead!

Thanks everyone for a lovely evening. We will try pizza again NEXT MONTH because GoodGym is turning 10 and all the areas are having local celebrations so hopefully we'll get in next time :)

Community mission this weekend...

Help paint the Grinling Gibbons fence this weekend! As I mentioned yesterday, Natalie has organised for us to be able to finish the painting of the huuuuuuge fence at her school. The slot is 3 hours long to allow more time than a standard group run to get as much done as possible so if you can spare an hour or two it would be MUCH appreciated! Great to see a bunch of you already signed up! The link to sign up is here!

See you next week!