14 runners ran 4km to hammer stakes into the ground and plant trees at St Lukes Primary School!

Well done to all of you troopers for sticking with us through January. We started off a big group and gradually dwindled down until only the bravest and hardiest remained. So kudos to you for making it this far. It is probably going to get colder before it gets warmer but the nights are getting lighter and the promise of spring is right around the corner, well maybe 2 or 3 corners away.

Big welcome to GoodGym tourist Louise coming all the way over from York! We feel very privileged that you chose Greenwich for your Wednesday tourism Louise, it was great to have you with us and thanks for being the most splendid back marker!

THE BIG HUNDY!

Huge conratulations to Jenny who is now in the 11th person to crash through the 100 good deed barrier! Excellent work JP! It's been amazing to see your running go from strength to strength over these past two years including countless parkruns and a marathon to boot! Looking forward to doing many more good deeds with you and seeing what your running has in store for you this year!

After a quick warm up, we headed over to St Lukes which has recently been a popular task for us. The main job last night was to build a leaf container. We only had half of the equipment required however as the wire hadn't been delivered yet but be could still make a decent start by hammering the stakes into the ground.

The rest of the group took to the other side of the garden in attempt to plant the remaining small trees that were donated a few weeks ago. Meanwhile Andy had a task that was made just for him and that was to help Myra's daughter, Bella, train her dog! Nice one Andy, I think that was an invaluable half hour for her and she learned heaps!

After about 20 minutes, all the stakes had been placed in the ground ready for the chicken wire to be placed around it at a later date. The trees were also coming along nicely too! Team tree planted as many as they could fit into the soil before it was time to head back to the uni for some strength and a tad more running!

4x 25 squats plus one lap and then Jenny's biscuits were calling. Nice work everyone, 100 squats banked, hope your bums aren't too sore today!

January Challenge Update

The month is pretty much over and I'm pleased to say we have gone through 8000 good deeds across all of GoodGym which is absolutely incredible. There have been some particularly stand out performances from Greenwich runners though.... Another well done goes to Jenny for doing the most good deeds this month clocking up 14! The next best person did 7 so that just goes to show how awesome this girl is and why she got to 100 so quick! And also a big up to Bliss for conquering the distance leaderboard running 276k for us! Nice!!! But of course just a huge well done to EVERYONE who ran and good deeded this month! You can see the final results here. The mathematicians amongst you though will notice that Greenwich runners have actually run the most kilometers per person which is wonderful and I couldn't be prouder!

Next week's run and SOCIAL!

Next week the task is still TBC but the one thing that IS certain is we are having some post run social time! GoodGym Greenwich had it's 4th birthday this month so I think some belated celebrations are in order! See you then!

Great work everyone, well done for getting so much done! It is always much appreciated so thank you! Remember we are heading to Beckton Parkrun on the 8th Feb so come along for some 5k fun!

18 runners ran 4km to help dig trenches and plant baby trees at St Lukes School!

Ah you guys, it's good to be back!! And happy to see another decent sized group for a winter month which bodes extremely well for the January Challenge... we are absolutely spanking the distance total and now working our way up the league for good deeds too so let's keep it up! I think we can do some serious damage to this leaderboard!

We were running a bit late but there's always time for a short warm up game, which admittedly have been few and far between recently! We began with Alex and Ben linking arms/holding hands, lovely. Then they began to tag as many scared runners as they could and lured them in to joining their chain. Loads of fun!! I especially enjoyed it when someone got cornered and had realised their fate.

Then it was time for more running, this time with some respect for each other's personal space. We set off through the foot tunnel and arrived at the school moments later. We were met by the lovely Myra who had loads of spades and forks and most importantly, the baby trees which had been donated by a bank (I think?) in Canary Wharf who are doing some carbon offsetting... ha! So hundreds of little tiny trees arrived at the school, all individually wrapped in their own clump of soil and our job was to find homes for them.

At first it wasn't exactly clear where they were going, but essentially it seemed that anywhere would do as long as they weren't too close to the fence or each other! Everyone grabbed some gloves and a spade and got digging. Lots of leaves and weeds were cleared in the process too, nice! After half an hour, we'd planted all the trees we could. Now all that was left to do was to hope that the kids don't come into school tomorrow morning and trample them all.

We said our goodbyes to Myra, had a quick photo and headed off to Millwall Park for a mini session. We paired up for a mile long fartlek, alternating between various fast, medium and slow paces. This is a great one to spice up any run, especially if you tend to be the type of person to do the same running route! So throw in some fartlek the next time you're out, it will make the time pass a lot quicker plus ultimately making you faster and fitter! Win win!

After two 800m laps we called it a night and headed back to the uni for a stretch! Nice work!!

Events coming up!

Pop Up Kitchen Community Mission in Charlton on Wednesday 22nd January.

Eltham Junior Parkrun Starter Session on Sunday 26th January.

Great work tonight everyone as always. Well done getting stuck into the task and getting loads done, it's always hugely appreciated by Myra and the school! See you next week for some fun at More 2 Childcare!

17 wonderful runners ran 4km to help at the St Lukes School Nature Garden!

Each Wednesday seems to get colder and colder but the energy and enthusiasm from GoodGym Greenwich never seems to fade!

We also seem to be building up a small French contingent too, although due to their amazing English, JC and Thomas didn't even realise the other person was French despite their accents! Plus Andy having spent lots of time in France is surely a wonderful French speaker! Also fun fact, I am half French but my speaking is TERRIBLE, but I guess this is as good an excuse as any to practice it. Any other French speakers in the group let me know!

We did a few laps to warm up and then set off via the tunnel and arrived at St Lukes ten or so minutes later. Myra was in the distance unloading the car and getting things ready for us. We shined our headtorches her way and she came over to let us in!

I always love coming here to see how the garden has developed because most of which we have helped with on previous tasks in one way or another. Our latest one was putting up the towers for the treehouse which is now complete and looks like so much fun!

Our main task last night however was to fill some gabion walls with rubble and sand and then later down the line they will be topped with soil and have wildflowers growing all over. Myra's visions are always AMAZING so I know it's going to look awesome when it's done!

We had four cages to fill and dozens of bags full of sand and rubble to start filling them with. Each cage needed a person to be inside to help press the rubble against the edges and keep the sand in the centre. After about 15 minutes, all the bags had been emptied and it was looking FAB!!

The last job was to move some old rubber mats to underneath the treehouse to stop kids from sliding on the muddy grass when thrashing around.

We had a quick photo up in the treehouse and then we were done!!

Fartleks!

We headed over to Millwall Park for a quick group speed session. The lap is pretty much bang on 800m in length and lit the whole way making it a great place to go for some winter intervals, or wintervals. In last night's case, we did some fartleks, which basically is just a fancy word for running at different speeds for varying lengths of time. You can do this yourself when you're next out on a run too by just saying to yourself ok I'm going to run fast to the bench or jog for 5 minutes and then run fast for 2 minutes or run at a medium/steady pace until I next see a dog.. you can have fun with it and it can spice up a boring training run any day of the week!

After two continuous laps we ran back to the uni for a stretch :)

Community Missions

Two wonderful community missions coming up prepping food, cooking and serving to the public! One of which is tomorrow so sign up asap if you can make that! Info is here:

Good Food Pop Up Kitchen at Woolwich Community Centre

Surplus Feast at the Woolwich Winter Warmer

Upcoming Group Runs

Sign up to the next couple of group runs here too! Let's keep these numbers up through the winter!

Helping out at Christchurch School next Wednesday and Flyering for the Made In Greenwich Shop the following week!

Parkrun

We will be at Southwark Parkrun this Saturday 9am for Ben Cooper's 50th Parkrun so hopefully you can join us for a free timed 5k! You can walk, run, jog, volunteer, it's up to you!

Great work last night as always guys and girls! As I mentioned I won't be here for the next two weeks but there will be two wonderful run leaders covering so please be as helpful as you can! Especially for the second week as I don't think Nicky has been to a Greenwich run before so look after her and I'll see you on December 11th!

16 runners ran 3k to help tidy up the garden at St Lukes school!

Another successful evening in the GoodGym bank! Wednesday's come around quick and before we know it we've done another good deed woohoo!

The evening began with a lush sunset over Greenwich as we made our way to the foot tunnel. News of a Strava segment from one end of the tunnel to the other meant there were a few faster runs through there than usual... if you're wondering the segment is named "Foot Tunnel Torment". Annoyingly because of GPS issues that tend to come with tunnels, the CR is 2 seconds :|

We arrived in Island Gardens and finished off the rest of the run to the school. Myra was already waiting for us with a van full of tools and bags ready to go. But first we checked on our treehouse progress! It looked awesome! Concrete had been put in the ground to hold the towers in place. And some cool ramps had been built already, so it was taking shape very nicely. Those kids are going to have so much fun playing on that when it's all done!

After getting back on track, our main task was to clear as many weeds and leaves as possible from next to the main walkway and then lay some woodchip over the top if there was time. Everyone grabbed some gloves, some squeezed their adult hands into a pair of kids gloves, however some people found that the kids ones fitted quite literally like a glove!

Then began the weeding frenzy! Filling bags with nettles, twigs and leaves and piling it all behind the bike sheds out of sight of the parents :)

After 20 minutes, we had cleared enough to start laying down the woodchip. The huge heavy bag was hauled over, emptied out and raked through nice and evenly. Our time was up!.... BUT.... we still had one bag of woodchip to put down and if we all pitched in together we could do it in a few short minutes and that's just what we did... NICE WORK! GO TEAM!!

It was pretty dark by this point, we attempted a photo and then head back through the tunnel to the uni and stretched! NIIIIICCEEEE!!

Community mission tomorrow

Here is the community mission at Charlton House I was talking about at the food kitchen. Prepping food, serving food and clearing up. Apparently they need more help in the afternoon and evening to clear up so if you can lend a hand that would be wicked!!

GG10 Group Run & Social

Next week we are heading to Vanbrugh Pits for some conservation work! It is also the week that GoodGym turns 10 years old so there are lots of celebrations happening in which case let's try and go for pizza after the group run, I'll make sure it's booked this time ;)

GG Super Saturday

Keep an eye out for some community missions all over for the GoodGym Super Saturday. More information here. I'll let you know more 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!

17 awesome runners ran 3km to help out at St Lukes School!

Firstly welcome to the four new runners that joined us last night. Shout out to Aoife (pronounced EE-fa) and Hermione who were doing their first ever good deed, and Sophie and Momoko tourists from Lewisham and Redbridge! Welcome one and ALL!

Also there was cause for celebration last night as the wonderful Jenny was about to complete her 50th good deed... SPECTACULAR work! And not only is Jenny an avid good deeder for GoodGym, but she often puts in extra volunteering hours outside of GoodGym as well, most recently completing numerous 6 hour marshaling shifts at The London Relay amongst a whole host of other things. Plus her running has totally transformed over this past year and a half which has been amazing to see! Looking forward to seeing how you get on in The Big Half next year! Fabulous work Jenny, keep it up!!

Topic of the evening was of course ice creams. I hope you will all be enjoying plenty of them today as we enjoy/endure 37+ degrees later on this afternoon!

We headed off to do a little warm up, more of a formality really as we were all already BOILING! Then we set off via the very cooling Greenwich Foot Tunnel and arrived minutes later at St Lukes School!

The very nice caretaker let us in while we waited for Myra to arrive who was unfortunately stuck in Blackwall Tunnel traffic! Everyone made themselves at home, had a drink, climbed the climbing frame and before we knew it she was here!

The primary task was to build what's known as a gabion wall which is essentially a cage basket that needed to be assembled and then filled with rubble and rocks and later on soil and plants. Myra is extremely talented when it comes to landscape design and anything garden related so even though it might seem like an odd thing to be doing, I just know in a few weeks once her brainchild has been fully born it will look amazing, like the front garden which some of you may remember we made COMPLETELY from scratch and now it is THRIVING!!

A few people went with Myra to fetch the cages from her car whilst the rest started bringing round more rubble bags. There was also some watering to be done plus a bit of weeding in the vegetable patch so Kat and JC kept themselves busy with that!

Time to build the cages! Cage number one was totally fine, no issues there, but cage number two was a little more complex in that it only had 4 sides (cubes tend to have 6 hahaha) so a bit of improv and imagination was required! Once everyone was happy with the build, it was time to fill them with the rocks. Sadly there wasn't quite enough of the bigger boulders to weigh or fill both cages but we did what we could with what we had, and Myra seemed very pleased so that's all that mattered!

After half an hour it was time to head back! On our way out, Myra fed us some flowers and herbs to fuel us for our return leg! We didn't quite have time for a fitness session this week, plus it was far too warm so we opted for a nice stretch instead!

Great work everyone!! Hopefully there will be a bit more for everyone to get involved with on our return next week! See you then!