“Running the marathon and going through your home town is great but also it was the first time I’ve raised money for a local charity,” recalls Ellie Brown, who raised £1,800 for the St Alfege Restoration Fund at this year’s London Marathon.
The running coach and local businesswoman, a Greenwich resident for twenty years, is taking a break from the marathon next year but will continue to teach others how to run with her Greenwich Runners club – the official running club of Greenwich Park.
She says she’s seen an increase in people wanting to get active since the Olympics.
“We’ve set up a running group for beginners and that’s very much on the back of the Olympics,” she says. “I had a lot of people asking how they could get in to running but didn’t know how, so that group has just started and we had twenty at our first session.”
Despite the upheaval caused to park runners by the staging of the London 2012 equestrian events in Greenwich Park , Ellie says she was “very much for the Olympics” and thinks the park will eventually look “better than it did before.”
“It’s looking beautiful and it will be back to its normal self.”
Having lived in West London before she moved to the Ashburnham Triangle in Greenwich, I wonder what it is about Greenwich that makes Ellie love it so much.
“What Greenwich has that I haven’t found anywhere else in London is the amazing community and it’s not just Greenwich. It seeps into Blackheath and it seeps into Deptford and it really is a very strong community, and I think the park acts as a hub for that community. It’s very, very special.”
Find out about Ellie’s Greenwich Runners and her pilates studio.
