26 awesome runners ran 4km to help St Mark's Church!

It was cause for celebration last night as our very own Steve was achieving his 50th good deed! Amazing!!!

We also had a few GoodGym tourists: Dan from Newham, and Rachel all the way over from GG Cardiff! And last but not least, we had new runner Vicky join us too... welcome to the GGG squad everyone!

National Pet Day ♡

We spent a few mins going round talking about our first pet, lots of fish and rabbits! Marta even wanted us to adopt a GG dog to bring on the group runs.... We actually did have a lady bring her dog to a group run once, but she didn't come back after the first one :(

Anyway off we went for a little warm up, throwing it back to when we were all 10 with a game of stuck in the mud! After a few minutes everyone was suitably warm and ready to run! Ben placed the ceremonial Greenwich cape upon Steve and off we went!

About 10 minutes later, we arrived at St Marks and were greeted by the lovely Tony who told us a bit about the church and the task at hand. There was some Ikea style furniture which needed assembling so Steve C and David headed off to do that. Everyone else grabbed a rake, a broom, a shovel, whatever they could get their hands on and started tearing up the weeds. There were 3 areas that needed attention and within minutes we could start to see a difference.

Lots of people paired up, one held a bag open while the other shoveled in the weeds. Good team work going on! After the weeds had been removed, it was time to hammer in the mini fence! Which actually proved harder than we thought with all the gravel embedded in the soil, but as always these guys got the job done!

Nina the best sweeper

The task was nearly finished, the place just needed one final sweep, and who better than the best sweeper in the world.... Nina.

The clock struck 8 and it was time to head off! We took a nice photo with Steve's cape flapping and ran off into the distance.

Strides!

Hill repeats were on the agenda for the fitness session yesterday but as always I changed my mind last minute and settled for some strides. As I mentioned, these are short sharp sprints of about 100 metres or 20 seconds ish and it's a great thing to add onto the end of your easy runs as they really help improve your running form, I'd recommend about 6-8 of them. Just make sure you bring your heart rate right down after each one, so a slow jog recovery or even a walk.

We only had time for 4 of them as the pub was calling! We headed back to the uni for a little stretch and then off to the Old Brewery for Steve's celebrations and the second edition of "Which twin?"!

Thanks for all your efforts last night! Great work on the task, you got so much done! And awesome running as always! See you next week!