Make them clean, keep them keen

22 amazing runners ran 3km to help at the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice charity shop!

So yesterday we had our BIGGEST TURNOUT EVER in Greenwich! I think we had more people than Trump did at his inauguration. I'm not sure if it's the recent tube adverts, friends bringing friends or just the appeal of a post run beer that was responsible for the numbers last night... perhaps a combination of them all! Either way I was one happy bunny!!!

Of those 22 people, 5 were first timers, which is great! We welcomed Andy, Angela, Bashirat, Luke and Linda to the gang. It was lovely to meet you all, I hope you had a good time with us! :) Make sure you give them all a cheer!!

We did a headcount and went round the (huge) circle doing names and favourite film of the animated variety before we dropped our bags and got going with a warm up!

Baby it's cold outside

Just when we thought it was getting warmer, we get a night like last night that is basically England telling us NOPE and that winter is still well and truly here. We did a little jog plus a few mobility exercises then we played a game... because as most of you know, I love a warm up game.

So everyone was in a circle holding hands because we are all friends. I shouted out commands and the goal was to keep everyone connected and not break the chain anywhere! So everyone had to either jump in, jump out, jump left or jump right. We did that for a bit and then things got really interesting when we had to do the opposite of what I said... mwahahahaha.

We set off down to the charity shop, which was through Greenwich and by the station, so quite a short run but it enabled everyone to stay together and chat which was nice :) We arrived and were greeted by Jane who couldn't quite believe how many of us were walking in. I think the numbers had doubled since the last time we went to this shop! She told us a bit about the hospice and what jobs needed doing and then everyone got to it!

Charlotte, Angela and Mridula were tagging clothes in the back room, Charlie's Angels style. Steve was on hoover duty (I guess Christian needs a break from cleaning all day at work), James and Gareth were stuffing bags with newspaper to plump them out, Vickie, Tom & Helen were folding scarves, and everyone else was cleaning shelves, tidying up displays, making sure clothes were facing the right way! After just 15 minutes we had done everything! With this amount of people, it doesn't take long! So we said our goodbyes and ran to the Cutty Sark for a fitness session!

Circuits!

We split into 4 groups and had 4 exercise stations: Tricep dips (upper body strength means better running posture!), step ups (for strong glutes), lunge walk (for strong glutes again) & plank shoulder taps (for core strength). We did each one for 30 seconds before switching to the next station. We threw in a little Nandos sprint between each one to really get the heart rate up! We did 2 rounds in total and went for a final little jog along the river to stay warm because by this point it was FREEZING.

TO THE PUB!

A few stretches to finish off and then we picked up our bags. We said goodbye to a few runners who weren't able to join us for the social and the rest of us headed to the Gipsy Moth for some food and drinks :)

We had such a lovely evening and thanks so much everyone for joining us! I will post all the photos on our Facebook group so please feel free to join it and use the photos to entice more people to come along and do good deeds!

See you next week! x