Last night 12 runners ran 5.8km to sort food and baby clothes at Salvation Army

Southwark News

• STOP THE PRESS! OLYMPIC TORCH MAKING PARTY THIS SUNDAY!!!! We'll be eating takeaway and making a torch for the Olympics on Sunday evening. Bring creative ideas, glitter, glue, something red/orange for flames ANYTHING! It'll be ridiculous crafty fun. Let us know you're coming here.

• GoodGym Olympics on Saturday 30th June, come and cheer on your team. There's a bake off and plenty more fun!

• Community Mission to set up Blythe Hill Festival with the Lewisham gang on Sunday 1st July. IT'LL BE A CORKER.

• 15th July is the British 10k. Come and volunteer at the GoodGym water aid station. You get a free place to any Virgin sports race as a thank you!

• We're on Instagram! Follow us @goodgym_southwark.

Phew.... That's enough of the business

12 runners waded through the thick soupy humid air to get to Old Spike for 18.45 last night, ready to go on our weekly volunteering spree. After a few weeks off due to my sprained ankle I was back in action and hell was I excited to actually run with you all!

Girija and Sally took the reins for the route out, challenging us with a shorter but steeper route than anticipated. Big shout out to Allison who made it up the hill without stopping for the first time. All hail Allison, give her a cheer here. We made it all in one piece to meet Janet at the Salvation Army who set us to work on two different tasks:

• One group sorting and labelling foodbank items
• One group sorting donated baby clothes for the baby bank
• One group cleaning toddler cushions

We were reborn!

In 30 minutes not only did we finish everything, we actually had to go into the loft for more baby clothes to sort. We also put all the tables down that we'd used and packed them away. We even clean up after ourselves... the perfect guests!

Fun Fact! Spanish is the second spoken language in Southwark!

We sorted tons of baby clothes, reorganised the entire foodbank cupboard and cleaned all the toddler cushions. Excellent work team! We headed back a different way using the Southwark Sweep - where the runners at the back shout 'sweep' when the front runners are getting too far away and the front have to run all the way to the back of the line. A few peeled off home and the remaining goodgymers executed a brilliant sprint for home when we rounded the corner onto the Rye.

Next week we're going to the Giraffe House on Burgess Park to help build a planter for tomatoes. There will be lifting, shovelling and weeding. See you there!

Lucy J

20 runners ran 6km to weed at Bell House in Dulwich

Hump Day evening! You know what that means... it's GoodGym Southwark! Last night 20 of us gathered at Old Spike Roastery including FIVE (COUNT 'EM) FIVE FIRST TIMERS. Big cheers for Chloe, Caitlin, Frances, Heather and Marisa for coming along, hopefully the first of many good deeds! A big woop also for Bristol legend Debs Redmond who's furthered her GoodGym tourism by coming to see us!

A New Task EEk!

After a briefing and a warm up we set off for the 3k (basically a straight line) to Bell House in Dulwich. Bell House has had many incarnations in its lifetime and now it is an education centre that offers support outside the mainstream curriculum. The house is a centre for educational needs such as dyslexia support and it is entirely volunteer led. They have some great short films on their website about the work they do, have a look!

Weed don't need no education (except the amazing opportunities offered by Bell House)

We arrived at the gorgeous garden and were put to work - Sarah and Tim helped us with what were and were not weeds and we got to work. 20 people can get a lot done in as many minutes! We got really stuck in, enjoying the beautiful environment as we did so (and messing around with sticky willy). When time was up we had two very full wheelbarrows to show for ourselves (see photo). Sarah was thrilled! We thanked our task owners and headed back through gorgeous Dulwich park to base.

Every Saturday at 09.30 Bell House have a volunteer session. As Tim pointed out, it's perfectly timed for just after Dulwich parkrun... and there's coffee and croissants. What more could you ask for on a Saturday!

We got loads done and got a solid 6km run out of it. Great work team!

Looking forward to seeing you next week.

Keep running happy,

Lucy