Nineteen lively lovelies went eagerly into the night to spot, gather up and deposit for recycling, a magnificent twelve* Christmas trees! 5km of running were smashed and an intense session of strength work and shuttles were tackled.

What do you do when your group run task has to be cancelled at the last minute, due to illness? You look around and see what's needed on the streets of Lewisham! It wasn't only our task-owner who fell ill today, emails and texts flew in, telling of duvets and aching limbs, so get well everyone, get strong and ready to finish off our painting at Crofton Books and to keep doing good all over the borough!

Feeling in rude good health and ready to get out there, our fittest few trickled in and caught up on the week's news (well done to all of you have kept on running in the frrrrreezing cold weather!). Tonight we welcomed a few first-timers to Lewisham, show some love to Kirsty, who joined us for the very first time, Mridula, who had been to GoodGym Greenwich last week and wanted more and to Shanice, who has been frequenting GoodGym Lambeth and fancied a bit of local tourism!

To warm up our bodies to run, we took to the grass (which was unexpectedly muddy, sorry!) for a heart-rate-increasing game of 'up and over', where two teams passed a tennis ball up and over the line, performing a sprint relay in between. Some lovely light steps were seen, but mostly in an attempt to avoid falling in the mud! Tentative dynamic drills ensued before we synced Strava apps and headed towards Ladywell. The plan for our run was to keep our eyes peeled. This week is the last one where you can deposit your tree on Hilly Fields, to be collected and recycled by the council. It's all very well bringing a gigantic tree into your home for the festive season, but trying to lug it up the hill?

One half of the group took to Marsala Road, with the others ducking and diving along Algernon (don't we have some lovely street names?!). Meeting at the end, we quickly discovered that Marsala are clear Christmas tree recycling winners, whereas Algernon...came up with the goods! Noise levels lifted, as teams of two shared the carrying (some of these trees were BIG) and others swapped in to help out. Through Ladywell we went, attracting admiring (puzzled) glances from commuters and a jolly toot-toot-toot from a passing car. Relieved of our load, we set out along Adelaide Avenue, not expecting to find any here, right by the recycling points...

Gasp!

Avoiding getting into tree-shaming, a tree was politely scooped up and walked across the road (it really is challenging for many people to lift something as big as this, even this short distance, so we were reassured that our help was needed!). Off now, towards Brockley and up and down a couple of side streets. Lucy commented that we should aim for twelve trees for the twelve days of Christmas and we did it! *Yes, one of those 'trees' was a wreath, but we're having it.

Our run now took us out and along Hilly Fields Crescent (no trees here) and down Ellerdale Road towards our start point. Someone commented that, if I made them do hill repeats again this week, they wouldn't come back. I'm not that evil!! So tonight's fitness session was made up of some strength work and shuttle sprints in pairs or teams of three. Knowing how muddy the grass was, we made use of the children's play area, with cones lined up to run out and back to (and from), our athletes went deep into jumping squats, 'speed-skater' lunges, switch-lunges, knee-lifts, planks and rounded off with some tricep-dips over at the handily-placed benches.

Steaming

As we stretched (and made our start point a little muddy, sorry Glass Mill!), we chatted about upcoming tasks. This Saturday is our second January starter session, over at the wonderful Wildcat Wilderness, you can read more about it and sign up here. Next Monday, we will be making a short run to Lewisham Market, for some outdoor painting. Wrap up warm!