15 amazing runners ran 5km to help at Age Exchange in Blackheath!

It was a very special day yesterday as the awesome Ben made his 100th GoodGym appearance! What an achievement. Not only has Ben helped his community 100 times, his running has also gone from strength to strength since joining GoodGym back in April 2016. This year has been a big one for him where he completed his first marathon in Manchester, then went on to run a super tough trail marathon on the South Downs Way and finally managed to crack that elusive sub-20 minute 5k at Parkrun! The list of achievements are endless and we're all excited to see what you're going to do next year as you step up to the ultramarathon stage! Well done Ben, keep up the amazing work!!!

We were a wee bit pushed for time last night as we had a little bit further to go and a pretty steep hill to negotiate on the way so we set off with a light jog to get the blood flowing instead of our usual routine.

Before we knew it, we'd hit the base of Crooms Hill which starts off ok with a gentle incline and gradually gets steeper and steeper. Everyone took it in their stride and didn't even bat an eyelid. Hill? What hill?

We continued our journey over the heath with a little bit of off-road running, in the dark... nothing like running blind on uneven ground to get all the senses fired up eh! (I take health and safety extremely seriously for anyone at GG Central reading this!)

We reached the other side and rejoined the pavement and made our way through Blackheath and arrived at Age Exchange moments later. We were greeted by the lovely Andrea who had everything all set and ready for us to go!

Our main task was to fill 500 envelopes with fundraising letters to be sent out over the coming days. Pieter was on franking duties which I remember from last time was a pretty slow going job but someone's gotta do it, so thanks Pieter!

Within seconds, each table had established their own system and were stuffing those envelopes at the speed of light. After 20 minutes Amy and Lee and finished and it was onto some festive book wrapping for them! Time was a-ticking, a few other groups finished and joined the wrappers for the last few minutes.

AAAAND we did it! 500 letters folded, packed, sealed (with a bit of extra saliva on some), and ready to be posted! NICE ONE.

We tidied everything away, stacked chairs on tables, fetched Pieter from the franking room and set off on our journey back to the uni! Burgers were calling. We stuck to the pavements this time and ran down the other side of the park on Maze Hill to drop down into Greenwich. After a few stretches we were done and continued our Ben celebrations at Honest Burger!!

Christmas dinner reminder!

We are paying the deposit and sending meal choices for our Christmas dinner THIS Friday so if you haven't already please transfer Alex £10 and fill in your meal choices here. If you need his bank details it will be in the email he sent you or just drop me an email and I'll send them over. All the info for our festive night is here! Hope you can make it!

Great work last night all! It would have taken Andrea days and hours and countless paper cuts to achieve what you managed to get through in half an hour so well done! Great job on the run too! See you next week!