With the promise of an indoor task, a whopping 26 runner/volunteers took to the streets of Lewisham, covering 5km, covering a wall with paint, sorting through donated books, cleaning book shelves, building book shelves and live-tweeting the whole shebang. As if this wasn't enough for one evening, they only went and ran hard up and down a blimmin' big hill TWICE!!

I had a feeling this evening's group run might be busy, everyone loves visiting our friends over at Crofton Books. Quite quickly the foyer filled up around me, with new faces strolling over from all directions, marvellous. A hefty dose of Lewisham Love tonight goes to Chris, Clara, Sam, Lucy and Nadine. Did you know you can snaffle a pair of red laces if you bring a friend? This week the red laces were flying, with Steve, Scott and Conroy all now busy re-threading their running shoes.

There was a celebratory air this week, as we congratulated Lucy on her parkrun PB and heard from Kim about her first weekend mission, which involved a meat cleaver, a plastic trowel and tree roots. All the fun. Time to warm ourselves up and get to know each other's names. Our headcount took on a colourful theme, since we were off to do some painting. with everyone calling out their favourite colour. All bow down to Mridula, who had by far the poshest favourite colour in cerulean. Oooooh. A challenge was then set, to come up with a paint name, to reflect our wonderful borough...

We must have looked pretty splendid, trailing through Ladywell, a line of red shirts and nodding heads, chatting away. A slightly puzzled, yet impressed, wave at Conroy here, as he cycled past in the opposite direction. Before long, we were curving through Crofton Park and nearing our task...and Conroy had locked up his bike at our start point and caught up with us. 10/10 for dedication and speed!

Since our last visit, Jason has got hold of some more paint, so a team of eager DIYers set to with the rollers, brushes and ladders, transforming the entrance, a fine example of co-operation and team work, negotiating space around each other to reach corners and skirting boards. Over in the book shop, a team grabbed cloths and cleared books, to give the shelves a jolly good dust. Others sorted through and priced donated books (and there are some really lovely books here) and Tim focused hard on getting the pricing gun working, so he could spring into pricing action.

Down in the basement, another team found bits of shelving to bring upstairs. On our last visit, Tim took the opportunity to photograph the little bits that would help us get these shelves up and in use, contacting other libraries, to see where we could get hold of some. Jason followed up this detective work and now has a collection of tiny plastic clips, which our flat-pack smashers clicked into place. While all this was going on Nikki was like a roving reporter, live-tweeting everything @CroftonBooks.

At this point, the clock was ticking by and I hear the voice of Kevin from Grand Designs, telling the viewers that we've run out of time (rubbing his hands together, since this will make such good viewing). Reluctantly, tools were put down, books were put away and pricing guns laid to rest. Until next time. Piling out, we heard a slight crash, as a shelf fell, scattering its books on the floor. It's fortunate that we were here and not halfway along Adelaide Avenue, so a team of thoughtful helpers fixed the shelf and replaced the books, while everyone else thanked them for delaying what came next.

Our group reformed and with Steve, our back-marker, in place (thank you Steve), we warmed ourselves up with a run towards everyone's favourite, Hilly Fields. Yeeeaaahhhh! When I asked who does hill repeats by themselves, only one person put their hand up. Really?! Hill repeats are the best! They build strength and encourage good form - look at how hard you drove those arms and how well you lifted your knees. Pros. In pairs, we took it in turns to run 'up and over', our hill being long and winding, with a little surge at the top, before turning and jogging down to hi-five our partners as they took on the hill. This was done twice. It was tough. Our runners were tougher.

Those who have been this way before know that our run 'home' is down hill, so teeth were gritted, with the knowledge that relief would come soon. A nice stretch was very welcome, back at Glass Mill, where we heard about next week's task at a very local church, St Stephen's, which means a shorter run, so sign up and join us! It was time, also, to find out the name of our own borough paint...drum roll please...Blueisham! Good work from Scott there, we haven't heard anything from Dulux yet, but keep an eye on those little colour swatches, it might just be the next big design trend! Run well people and keep doing good!

*I know, colour.