28 runners ran 5km to clear the garden at the Charlton United Reformed Church!

Well yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far and it was also the longest! Double whammy! And what a beautiful (read:sweaty) evening it was. I think between us we must have sweated enough to fill Charlton lido! Well I certainly did anyway. So big well done for coming out and running in those sticky conditions, you did GREAT!

It was also a special day because our very own Ben Cooper (aka Mr Greenwich) turned 50 last week (50 good deeds of course - you don't look a day over 25 Ben) so it was the perfect excuse to have a social after our run! And probably was the only thing keeping some people going by the end!

New recruits!

We were joined by 3 new runners yesterday... Vickie's friend Sarah, Brin's girlfriend Kerry and Scott who has run with GG Bromley before! WELCOME ALL!!!!

We did a little warm up in our usual spot, not that it took much to get everyone warm..! The two Bens led a faster group to the church while the rest of us attempted to take it easy! We went through the park, up a pretty awful hill (sorry) but everyone did it WITHOUT STOPPING which was AMAZING!!!! A little rest at the top, and a sweaty photo by the nice tree then we pushed on.

On arrival at the church, we met Andrew who took us through to get some water and some fake squash to Vickie's disappointment. It was definitely hotter inside than out so we got out of there pretty swiftly and cracked on! Group 1 had already got stuck in, hacking away at the garden and filling bin bags with weeds. There were plenty of tools to go around so we handed them out and got to work on the other side of the church!

We had a bit less time than I anticipated due to all my faffing and photos so the decision was made to skip the fitness session and stay a bit longer at the task. After 25 minutes, the place was looking AMAZING! Mission "sign Ben's card" was well under way and seemed to be more difficult than the task itself! Especially when Steve takes up 50% of the card with his sentiments!

A big group photo in front of the church and then we were ready to head back. We ran home as one big group which was lovely :) a nice little stretch on the grass and then that was it!

PUB TIME!!!

Alex had kindly booked some tables at the Old Brewery and I had totally forgotten about their outside space and it was LOVELY! Andy was spotted taste testing one of Mridula's INCREDIBLE cupcakes! At the run a few weeks ago, I asked everyone's favourite cake so she could make Ben's favourite... and of course he went for BLACK FOREST GATEAU. I remember seeing Mridula's eyes roll back so far into her head that day, but what an amazing job she did, they were DE-LISH!

The twins had kindly prepped a quiz for Mr Greenwich about all things Greenwich and I think it's safe to say that everyone was blown away by Ben's Greenwich knowledge! Lots of food and drinks later and we headed home. What a lovely evening!

Thanks so much for coming everyone! Hope you had a nice time and well done for coping so well in that heat! For those of you who are new or who haven't yet, please join our GoodGym Greenwich FB group! See you next week where we are helping out again at Neil's school!

As well as lovely Hounslow regulars Claudia, Dave and Andy, we had some excellent GG tourism going on last night in the shape of Debs all the way from Bristol, and Jo and Ella from Wandsworth. You are all marvellous and deserve a cheer!

Well done to Dave, who did Osterley Park Run last weekend - apparently it's a good one if you like running on grass - and to Jo who tackled (a frustratingly short) Southwark. Good luck to Debs, who has a 10k race coming up this weekend. Check out these speed demons! Don't forget park runs are a great, free way to improve your 5k time; they are all over the country and are really friendly events.

While we were doing our warm up, we discussed which famous person, dead or alive, we would like to take out for a drink. We got David Attenborough, Al Pacino, Terry Pratchett, Bon Jovi, Thierry Henri and Stephen Hawking. Now that's a dinner party I'd like to attend!

We set off for Ealing Road Baptist Church at a nice trot, with Andy and Dave leading the charge. We usually help the pastor, Roger, out with the homeless shelter he hosts every weekend for local men, but this week we were doing a few jobs in the church building. While Ella and Jo got to work shifting a whole load of chairs (and haing a philisophical discussion about heartbreak with the pastor), Debs, Dave, Andy and Claudia were led down the stairs into a small, dusty cellar. You brave people. The job there was a tough one - to clear the cellar of junk and debris. It was really hard going, dirty work, and a bit confined, so we swapped over halfway (apart from poor Dave who heroically did both shifts!). Well done team, you earned your stripes tonight.

Cleaning up done, we set off back to Turnham Green to do a quick but intense fitness session. The run back was quicker than the outward leg, which is great going. We kicked off our session with a quick game of chase the hare. The idea is that nobody knows who the hare is except the hare themselves. Everybody sets off on a loop, and at any point the hare makes a sprint for home, and the other runners have to chase them back. Jo was our speedy target, and everybody made a jolly good effort chasing her down. It's a great way to do a little speed work. If that wasn't enough, we then took on a round of upper body circuits. These included press ups, both wide arm and diamond, tricep dips, side planks and regular planks for 45 seconds at a time. This is a difficult session, but really effective for toning up those upper body muscles.

All that was left was some nice stretches and a quick relax on the grass to end off the night. Well done to everybody who came from near and far, the goodest of gymers! Same again next week? You can sign up here

Hump day in Hounslow is the best ever. Don't believe me? Have a read at what the dream team got up to last night...

We met at a hot hot hot Chiswick Town Hall, ready to do some serious good. But first we had some high fives to hand out. A huge well done to the lovely Jennifer who ran Gunnersbury Park Run for the first time and smashed it, and also to Andy who just ran double the furthest distance he'd every run before in one go with his Dad, who was celebrating 20 years of running. Fantastic job, and in Jennifer's words, that's proper 'runspiration'! We also welcomed back Marco from Islington, no Camden, no Islington.

While we did a little bit of warming up, which included some fancy fast footwork, we chatted about our favourite sandwich fillings. If, dear reader, you're interested, in Hounslow we like; tuna, halloumi and avocado (posh), egg (good protein), smoked salmon (posh), chicken and cheese. Who's getting hungry?

It was a nice 1.7 mile run down to Ealing Baptist Church, which we haven't been to in ages. Well done to everybody for doing it without stopping (aside from a short pause at the worst roundabout in the world). Roger was waiting for us, and there were some distractingly delicious smells emanating from the kitchen....

After a quick glass of water we were taken upstairs to get cracking on our task. The first job was to move a huge pile of bags from one room to another. The bags were full of donated clothes - our task was to sort them out into women, men, kids and, um, miscellaneous, before putting them into nice strong bags ready to be given to the homeless. Even with some small pauses - 'is this small man, or large child?' we got the job done quicksharp, filling all the large bags that Roger had bought.

We were just about to set back off for our run back when Roger came out of the kitchen with six lots of dinner for us all. What a legend! Best task ever.

Our run back was all the quicker, knowing we were carrying our supper with us, and with Andy and Marco doing some extra speed work, we arrived at the Town Hall ready for some stretches in no time. Thanks to the older gent on the bicycle who rode past as we were stretching against the Town Hall pillars shouting 'I tried that yesterday, they wouldn't budge!'. There's always one :)

Following on from Ella's Chiswick Chuckler a couple of weeks ago, we had this rib-tickler from Jennifer this week: two drums and a cymbal fell off a cliff. Ba-dum, tish!

So, I think you'll agree that hump day is the best day in Hounslow - getting fit, making a difference, free dinner, and even a joke or two thrown in! For more of the same, sign up for next week here

GoodGym Greenwich smashed all previous records AGAIN last night with a whopping 33 of you running 8km to help the Scouts!

Last night was AAAAAAMAZING. The weather was slightly nicer than the complete washout we had last week, plus we had our biggest turnout EVER in Greenwich. It doesn't seem long ago that I had Taylor Swift in my head after 22 of you came... never did I think it would continue to grow this much... you guys are AWESOME!!!

We welcomed quite a few new faces to the group last night which is GREAT! Big thanks to recruiters Helen and Mridula for bringing their colleagues Maria & Irina. We were joined by two lovely gents Pulin & Nick. We also welcomed back Amy G after a little break and the wonderful Jack from Wandsworth who travelled quite a distance to get to Greenwich, but we're worth it aren't we Jack :) GIVE THEM ALL A CHEER!

HOLIYAY

The headcount used to take about 4 seconds, now it has become part of the ritual and takes a good 5 minutes to go around everyone! Favourite thing pivoted slightly last night to next holiday destination (inspired by the sunshine obviously) and it was great to hear where you're all off to. There were some pretty exotic ones, Swindon in particular, Alex and Steve please could you take me in your suitcase????

We dropped off our stuff, did a quick little warm up and split into 2 groups. Ben with the hat and Ben with the hat led a fast group who we lost sight of in about 40 seconds. The rest of us went at a slightly more leisurely pace :) We went through the park, everyone smashed it up the hill, had a 60 second breather and then pushed on!

20 minutes later we arrived at the scouts. Group 1 had already got themselves stuck in which was great to see! Scout Leader Alan explained the tasks that needed to be done. Arguably the most exciting of which was putting up the flagpole! This is something that has been on our list of things to do the last couple of times we've been here but we've never actually got round to doing it. But last night it was ON! George got started and he dug deep... literally.

"Tonight Matthew, I'm gonna be..."

With a little help from Christian, Elliot & Steve the cement was ready to go in, which created a lovely Stars In Their Eyes puff of smoke. Steve filled a bucket with "water" and chucked it down the hole and 5 minutes later it had set... JOB DONE.

In the meantime, other people were painting shutters, weeding in the jungle, filling fox holes (don't worry Nina there were no baby foxes in there), axing trees... literally everything was going down. 8pm approached and it was time to get going. We had a group photo by the wonderful flagpole which kind of looked a bit naked without a flag on it, just a white stick in the ground basically.... but it had to be done. We headed back the way we came, by this point the sun was a little less fierce which made for a lovely chilled run back. Since we were a bit later than planned and everyone had already run 8km, we skipped the fitness session and went straight into some nice stretching... you're welcome :) Trying to up my game after hearing other GG groups do yoga in their sessions haha!

Brownie points!

We went to stuff our faces with some amazing brownies baked by the equally amazing Mridula! Then we parted ways.... until next time gang!!!

For those of you who are new, here is the link to our ever growing Facebook group where people post about races and missions and well, anything really! Please join :)

Amazing job last night everyone! Thanks for getting stuck in as always, that would have taken Alan a whole day (if not more) to get everything done that you did in half an hour so really well done!!! And congratulations on, once again, being a part of our biggest ever run! YOU GUYS ROCK!! XXX