AWOL: abs-ent without leaflets!

28 runners ran 5km to flyer for the Mini Mulberries event at Charlton House!

What a lovely evening for a run!! I'm not sure if anyone realised, but until about 3pm yesterday, I didn't have a task lined up for last night. My first run as the trainer for GoodGym Greenwich happened on 1st June 2016, and it that whole year I have never not had a task so of course I was panicking. LUCKILY, I had a meeting at Charlton House earlier in the day about potential tasks for the future and they happened to have an event going on tomorrow that they ideally needed a few more people to attend so flyering it was!!!

We were joined by a fair few new faces last night (5 in fact!) which is great! We had Noa who is one of my Greenwich Training clients, Dom from Croydon who is now working at GG HQ, Alex's friend Millie, Nykolette who has run with GG Lewisham a few times and finally the lovely Dave who is a bit of a GG veteran all the way over from Bristol! Welcome to the squad! Give them all a cheer!

Piece of cake!

Favourite thing this week was cake... I might have done that one before, but who knows, I lose track! Lemon drizzle definitely came out on top! We dropped off our bags, had a bit of a scuffle with the security guys who, after a whole year, always seem to act surprised when we turn up every week!

A little warm up on the grass, a few photos and we were ready to split off into our little (or not so little actually) pace groups. Ben and Vickie took the faster group and I took the slightly less fast group :)

Racers, Chasers & Pacers!

I think maybe we will call the groups Racers and Chasers instead of fast and slow from now on! And then when we get even bigger and need to split into 3 groups, they can be called Racers, Chasers, and Pacers! Racers will be the fastest group, Chasers will be the middle group chasing the racers and the Pacers will be those who are taking it easy and pacing themselves... how's that!?!?!?!?!

My chaser team headed along the Thames Path down towards the Cutty Sark pub. The leaflets were distributed and I think anyone was lucky to receive any more than 3 each...! This was about to be the quickest task in history! BUT that's why GoodGym is so amazing, because when we have 28 people, we can do so much in so little time! Which means more time for running and chatting and photos!

Everyone went off in a slightly different direction and within about 5 minutes they were done and began to make their way back. We did a little run along the newly reopened Thames Path with a few breaks along the way and took a final photo of everyone along the river!

3, 2, 1... CLENCH!

I thought it would be nice to get a photo of everyone looking out into the distance.. basically just wanted to check out everyone's bums.. obviously. So instead of a smile, everyone clenched those cheeks. It was wonderful! Nina and Mridula even had a lovely Titanic moment.

We arrived back at the uni and perfect timing too as we saw the racer group coming in at the same time! Perfecto!

Here is a little account from Ben of the happenings in his group...!

"Subgroup B+V went for a brief meander through the park leading up to the Maze Hill gate. Ben led the group to Foyle Road. He recalled it from a previous flyering task. It is a particular nasty road as a lot of the houses have steep steps leading up to their letterboxes #extremeflyering!!!

Nonetheless, many hands (and strong legs) make light work, so all the flyers had flown in a matter of minutes. The observer on the street might have confused us with Royal Mail and mused 'Gosh, Royal Mail upped their game recently'.

How do you like those mulberries! Done. We headed back to the park. Helpfully, Ben knew a quick cut through Maze Hill station back to the park. Shortcuts are great n all so long as everyone in the group knows about them. Oops. Unhelpfully, we had lost Vickie and a few others.

As we had prior agreed to go to the park, we made our way there. We searched low. And evidently Vickie had led her search party high - better vantage point. And happily both groups met each others' gaze across the big green open expanse, and abandoning the path we ran straight across the grass, arms wide open to reunite.

Now, as you may know, obstacle races are very popular at the moment, so Ben had the idea to throw a obstacle, into the run, in the form of a small fence. It proved more difficult then it suggests. Everyone scaled the fence - in their own unique way - and then in pure beast mode we scrambled up the hill to the General Wolfe statue for the bella vista + classic photo op, as taken by a nice tourist #rolesreversed

Amy B left us at the point to get back to her revision. Good luck tomorrow!

At the start, a few of us had talked about staging running photos. It is a very 'Made in Greenwich' thing. Recent converts include Helen and Amy. Ben tried to stage a photo with Gareth, but nothing can really do justice to the full magnificence of Gareth's beard. You have to see it, breathe it, and touch it (if allowed) for it to be believed.

With the bells of St Alfeges ringing, we made it back to HQ just in time."

6 pack here we come!!!

With some time left to spare, we did some partner ab work! Some of you who have been coming a while have done all these exercises before but we haven't in a while so thought it'd be a nice throwback! 3 exercises, all with partners, all working you core muscles which, as you know by now, are so important for good running form! There were moans and groans happening from the get go! 3 sets of 30 seconds of each one and we called it a day!

Excellent work last night everyone! Sorry there wasn't a huge amount for you all to do last night but thanks for being so patient and understand as always and I hope you still had a good time! See you all next week for some charity shop work and our monthly time trial!!!

CRAFTERNOON REMINDER!!! I mentioned it briefly yesterday but if anyone wants to help with the making of the GoodGym Greenwich flag for the GG Olympics, Mridula is kindly offering up her flat in Surrey Quays on the evening of Thursday 8th June so please let me, or Vickie or Mridula know if you would like to come! It will be mega fun!!! There has been some chat about it on our Facebook group so please join if you haven't already!