Last night we ran along to Covent Garden to visit Rhythms of Life, a superb charity who feed, educate and provide clothes for the homeless.

Rebecca came along to her first ever group run tonight - give her a cheer for using her run to do some good on a Tuesday evening! Egg, the trainer for GoodGym York also paid us a visit, and it was lovely to have her. We had a little reminder of the Thursday running fitness session happening in Vauxhall this week (the final one of the series before it moves to another area!), and wished everyone luck in their upcoming races. Next week we also have a one-off lunchtime group run for University Mental Health Day! It's on Thursday lunchtime and you can sign up here.

We did some warm up exercises to activate all the muscles we'd be using for our run before doing a headcount and finding out which company everyone would like to be the CEO of. Answers ranged from the likes of Cadbury and Itsu (I suspect for never ending free goodies), to the V&A, the Dog's Trust and London Zoo - all very worthy organisations! If anyone makes it, let me know, as I'd like some special perks for helping you realise your goals!

The task: As it was just a short run there, we arrived in super speedy time, and met Faris, who told us a bit about the charity and showed us to the different rooms where they had tasks that needed doing. Once small group took on the Atrium, where they needed to remove lots of the furniture that was cluttering the room up, to make space so they could use the room for activities for the homeless. The main bulk of the group set to work on the clothes donation room. The charity are very lucky and get a lot of clothes donations, however it currently takes their volunteers hours to find the right piece of clothing as it's not in any kind of order. We helped to categorise all the clothing by putting it all in crates with labels. A splinter group removed all the bags of clothes that didn't have labels on, rifled through them, and put labels in the top so we knew what was in there as soon as the bags were opened. This will make it easier for some of the regular volunteers to sort through the items (or for us next time we come!). There was so much to do and so we could only make a start today, but we will be back to keep working on the task soon.

After washing our hands, and getting a quick photo by the Rhythms of Life sign, we headed off into the night to make our way back to King's. When we arrived back we used the hill outside for our hardcore fitness session. This week we combined a typical speed skater's workout, keeping in theme with the winter olympics. Speed skaters have to generate a lot of power in their legs for their initial sprints at the beginning of their race. They do this by integrating lots of pylometric exercises into their programmes. Pylometrics is a type of jump training where your muscles exert a huge force in a short space of time. This helps with building the power! We split the group in half, and while one half did the hill sprint (focussing on an upright posture and pumping their arms), and easy run back down, the other half completed an exercise such as frog jumps, jumping squats and tuck jumps. They then swapped over, and did it all again!

Thanks Gosia for the photos as always!

Next week, Rachel and/or Sophie will be leading the run and you're going back to the YMCA charity shop by Goodge Street to sort through some of their donations. You can sign up here. Plus don't forget the lunchtime group run, leaving from our King's Sport Health and Fitness Waterloo Gym on Thursday 1st March. Sophie and Rachel will also be leading this and you'll be heading to Oasis Farm Waterloo - a fab task! You can sign up for that here.

Tonight we visited the YMCA Shop by Goodge Street to help them sort through some of their vintage and new donations. It was a 5km round trip, so we got lots of miles under our belts to get even further past our January target of 100km, which we had already surpassed before tonight’s group run took place!

We welcomed a new runner for their first ever group run - Hannah – don’t you think she has earned a cheer?!

After some brief introductions, and with a busy central London run ahead of us, we set off quickly for a night of running and doing good!

The task: We made our way up past Covent Garden and Fitzrovia until we got to Goodge Street, where we were greeted by Usukh at the YMCA Charity Shop. She showed us where they stored all their donations and split us up into groups to complete all the different tasks she has prepared. We had one group checking CDs and DVDs for scratches, one hanging all the new clothing donations onto hangers, and one lucky group tidying up the shop floor, and choosing new attire for the mannequins. Whilst singing a little bit of YMCA - Village People (you can enjoy it too, below), we got all our tasks done!

On the run back we practiced some sprinting techniques, focussing on that backwards arm drive, and warming up all those leg muscles.

Tonight was great fun - see you next week, when we will be helping out an awesome charity who feed and educate the homeless. We’ll be packing up some of their food collections into boxes for easy transportation!

We had so many fresh faces on our run this week - Marina, Stephanie, Glen and Gabriele - give these people a cheer everyone!

Did you know that we have a GoodGym-wide challenge happening this month? We want to get to 5000 good deeds and 50,000kms run across the whole of GoodGym in January. Our run tonight has currently put us in the lead of our division. However to keep our lead we do need to keep racking up the good deeds and those miles, so make sure you link your Strava and GoodGym profiles together and go out for some training runs, or ask me about getting DBS checked so you can get involved in some missions!

After find out what GoodGym is all about, welcoming all our newcomers, and meeting David - our Guest from Bristol - we locked up our bags and went outside for a warm up. We discussed what everyone wants to have made happen by the end of the year and with lots of answers to do with running we headed out into the cold night!

With some excellent back marking from Amy, we headed out over Blackfriars Bridge and made it to Blackfriars Settlement in record time.

The task: We met some of the awesome people working at the Centre and they gave us a brief history about the place - it was originally a women's university settlement, set up in 1887! They then set us to work in three groups - The pine-eers, Fairy's on top and Feeling pine. Each group had their own Christmas tree to take down, and it was a race to see who could get all the decorations off and packed into boxes, plus get the tree wrapped up, first. Fairy's on top were the over-all winners and they even managed to take down all the decorations in the stairwell too.

Once finished we split into two groups for the run back. The sexy and steady group were led by Dom, and the (after much consideration) stupid and speedy group were led back by me. Sexy and steady set off first, and the other group then tried to catch up with them on the run back. We didn't make it however, and so sexy and steady won the race! With a few minutes to spare we did some core work back at base to make sure we have good posture when running.

Great running!

See you next week when we will be sorting donations for the YMCA charity shop.