22 runners ran over 7km to help out around Charlton House!

Amazingly we ended up having one of our biggest turnouts of the summer on one of the grimmest evenings! Great work everyone! It was double (well triple) cause for celebration last night because Natalie was about to complete her 50th good deed, and her second of the day... awesome stuff Natalie, keep up the amazing work!! You'll be at 100 in no time!

It was also Alex and Steve's birthday... hope you had a wonderful day lads and thanks for choosing to come to GoodGym as part of your celebrations! I loved hearing about everyone's terrible birthday presents, who knew hankies were so popular?!

Our run last night was to the lovely Charlton House which is a bit further away than our regular tasks. It is nice to do a longer run every now and then but it means we were a little bit pushed for time, so we put our stuff in the room and set off immediately!

We arrived about 25 minutes later and were greeted by Carolyn and Megan who had a list of tasks for us. We had cable ties to snip from railings, we had gravel to sweep, litter to pick and books to tidy! Without much hesitation, everyone got cracking! There were already 5 do-gooders on hand who had arrived a little earlier and completed a few tasks before we even got there.. nice one!!

One of the jobs was tidying the books in the Old Library... what an amazing room that is!! Weddings are often hosted in there so we couldn't have any of the books stacked on top of the bookcases! Nuh-uh. Everything was nice and neat and lined up properly by the time we were finished with it!

After 20 minutes on site we were pretty much done. Loads of litter had been collected, the gravel had been swept from the disabled bay and relocated to under the archway and many handfuls of cable ties had met their match!

We took a quick pic before heading back a slightly different route for a change to see some different areas of Greenwich! We arrived back to the uni a little late but still with enough time to have some cakes to celebrate the special occasions and long run of course!

JC even treated everyone to some frozen meat and fish, he was not going to let anyone leave without some... I hope everyone enjoys their pork joints and home made fish & chips later tonight!

Next week is our social where we will get together after the group run. It would be great to have you there, sign up here if you haven't already and I will be doing a poll on the Facebook group for where to go so if you aren't a member of that yet make sure you join!

The community mission for the Twilight Walk marshalling that I was talking about is listed here. It's actually not until end of September (I thought it was sooner, sorry) but currently only Jenny is signed up and I'm sure she'd appreciate a few mates!

One more date for your diary.. on Saturday 31st August we are heading to Beckenham Place Parkrun for our monthly visit with the option to have a dip in the new ponds afterwards if it's a nice day. Should be fun!

And that's it from me for this week!!

Great work on the task and the run last night everyone!! There were a few vicious hills in there but I didn't hear a peep of complaining from anyone!! So really well done. See you next week for our litter pick run and social!

16 lovely runners ran 5km to help at the Mefa Montessori!

It was a wonderfully muggy evening over in Greenwich tonight, perfect for a summery GoodGym group run!

We had one new runner with us, welcome to Arjun, hope you enjoyed your first good deed!

The evening began as it always does, with a little intro followed by a warm up and then it was time to go!

Our journey took us through Greenwich Park, up the hill and through the Westcombe Park area until we arrived 15 minutes later at the Montessori!

We haven't been here for at least a year, so it was lovely to see Wendy greeting us with open arms! The place had undergone a huge makeover since last time we were there with the introduction of a new forestry school in the back yard which was amazing! They acquired the land and also received a grant from the council to create it and it's turned out fantastically.

The main jobs for us were cutting down some branches of next door's dead tree, varnishing the shed and putting up a trellis! So lots to be getting on with!

As soon as Wendy mentioned the word "drill" all the guys were on it! Going against all the GoodGym health and safety rules regarding power tools but I won't tell if you don't. I know you're a sensible bunch :) it took a bit of time to get the trellis level resulting in perhaps one unwanted hole in the wall but it all worked out perfectly in the end and Wendy was delighted with the result! Next time we can look forward to some Montessori wine now that the vines have someting to cling onto!

Meanwhile, the branches of the tree were coming down at a speedy rate and being cut up and packed up into bags. Also the shed was looking really rather shiny! After about half an hour, everything was done!! Excellent work!!

We took a quick pic and then set off on our run back to the uni.

Foot nerd alert

We didn't have much time left and I for one was quite tired so we finished off with a few balancing exercises instead of a regular fitness session. The aim of it was to bring some awareness back into our feet and try and strengthen those intrinsic muscles that don't get used very often. Our feet have 28 bones and 30 joints so they are meant to move A LOT, but sadly we lead lives that involve an increased amount of sitting and that coupled with modern footwear means they tend to get squished into high heels and narrow shoes and then lose a lot of their function which then translates into bad mechanics up the kinetic chain. EEEK!

So if you ever get sore knees or hips, or even lower back pain, it could be to do with weakened or immobile feet and ankles! Fix your foundations and the rest will fall into place. You wouldn't build a house on sand now would you?? :)

We did 2 simple exercises, one of which was a single leg balance but with eyes closed. As soon as you shut your eyes, your ankle and foot start twitching and gripping onto the floor which is a great one for awakening the muscles and strengthening the arch. The second one involved taking our socks off and doing some sock scrunches. Again this is super basic but really great to get the toes moving and the arch working. Your arch acts like a spring, so having a strong arch is basically free energy and will make you run faster. Yes you could go and buy a pair of Nike Next % shoes for £240 but that's cheating. This is way more cool.

So take care of your feet folks! The stronger they are, the happier your running will be and you will not need to wear insoles or "supportive shoes", your feet will be able to do the work instead!

Great work tonight everyone! Wendy was so pleased with everything you got done. The trellis and the branches in particular they would have found very difficult to do themselves so well done!! Hopefully see some of you at Greenwich Parkrun on Saturday, if not next Wednesday!