On a dark Monday evening, 22 runners lit up the streets of Lewisham, covering 5km of running and helping to paint the new shop space at GRACE.

On National Pun Day, our resident Pun King, Oli, has excelled himself! Check out that marvellous title pun and some beauties throughout this report.

It was an evening of welcomes, with visitors joining us from all corners of London! All our Lewisham Love this week goes to, Stuart, visiting from Bromley, Nicola representing Croydon, Lucy, over from Southwark and Aidan bringing his North London goodness all the way from GoodGym Islington.

News this week includes Personal Bests and a milestone:

• Great work from both Itmari and Maria at Hilly Fields parkrun, bagging themselves a PB (I think Itmari was also going sub-30 for the first time, by quite a way!).
• Incredibly strong running from our Tom at the Two Rivers Marathon over in The Netherlands.
• 50 good deeds totally smashed by Florence, well done Florence!

After some really great work was put in last week by some of our group over at GRACE, we were heading over as a whole, to continue setting up shop. GRACE work all-year-round to provide warm clothing to refugees arriving in various parts of the world and their space in Lee is central to all of this. In the time we have been visiting they have grown and grown, with rooms being shared with other organisations, creating a real community hub. Now they have acquired the space next door and it was our job to help them set up their shop there.

A very big thank you to Kim and Amber, who led the way on the run, as I wheezed and huffed my post-flu body to the task. Keeping us together as a group as back marker this week was Itmari - thank you!

Rags of fun!

Arriving at the task a little early, we were shown into the original space to keep warm, with a small group very quickly getting on with some 'ragging' - this is filling massive bags with clothing that is too warn/dirty/damaged to be distributed or sold in the shop. These bags will then be bought and recycled, thus bringing in more money to the charity - great work!

(F)rock and Rollers

As soon as Claire rolled up with the paint, brushes and rollers, it was all systems go, heading around the front and into the HUGE new space - wow! It really is quite special and you can see so much potential already! You will see from the photos that the walls leading upstairs have been decorated with very colourful 'creatures' and it was our job to start painting over these (we're not sure who put these here, maybe the Lib Dems, who used the space previously?!). As those who had brushes and rollers got stuck in, a smaller group got busy with the soapy water and cloths, giving everything that needed cleaning a good old wipe down (as the task went on, this extended into following painty shoes around and wiping up trainer prints off the floor, oops!).

Love it or (c)lothe it

Painting tasks, more than any others, seem to go very quickly! Dragging people away from walls, gathering together equipment, wiping up the last drips, we made our way downstairs to hear a little from Claire about plans for the space. This main area will be the new, much bigger (and super-stylish!) shop. The area towards the back will be used a few days a week by a local veg box service and the upstairs spaces will be used in time by other groups as well as GRACE themselves. We also heard that a member of the Conservatoire is sharing their time by offering music sessions to junior members of the space - isn't that rather brilliant? The current space will now be the warehouse, where all donations will be sorted and boxed up (volunteers always welcome!). We look forward to coming back again soon, to give those walls another coat of paint!

On our return we heard how Louise, Sarah and Arran (who didn't quite make it!) had already run a very long way to join us, with Louise taking the crown for the longest distance, of 20km! Great work all of you! This is all training towards the Big Half on March 10th which, if you're not running, you can still participate in...

...by being part of the GoodGym Drinks Station Team! Emma was telling us how exciting this is, with a lovely New Balance jacket coming your way and, if we cover a whole station, a donation to GoodGym! SIGN UP! If you're wanting to train longer as a group, Lucy is leading a super Sunday session, finishing in Forest Hill for post-run lunch (and rehydration?). Sign up here.

Meanwhile, see you next Monday, for more loveliness when we run over to Seniors :)