On a gloriously sunny, but chilly, morning in Lewisham, 13 volunteers covered 2.5km whilst collecting litter in Hilly Fields.

A bit different to our usual Monday evening group runs, we were allowed out and about in the daylight! Some of our participants had already taken part in parkrun, running/walking or volunteering, with Jacqueline having run to Dulwich parkrun, completed the 5k and then run back and Emma having already stretched herself at yoga - I don't think any of us have ever read the 'have a lie-in' memo for Saturday mornings!

How lovely to welcome Hilary, Clare and Cat, who were joining us for their first ever GoodGym session and Min, who was visiting GoodGym Lewisham for the first time - Lewisham Love to you all!

First of all, I talked a bit about coach running and missions, both incredible ways to get involved outside of our weekly group run. We played a few little games to keep warm, then pulled on our gloves, grabbed some bags and set off around the park. It was great popping in to the forest school area, where some children entered into the spirit of our task and found some litter to add to our bags - thank you! The ground was so very muddy everywhere, so we were limited in where we could reach, but those bags were filling up pretty quickly.

We puzzled over what the park-keepers have been doing to some of the bramble-rich areas, which have been stripped right back, uncovering a fair bit of crushed rubbish. As is usual at this kind of task, we found some 'treasure' in the form of a very flat fork, an appropriate sticker (see photos) and a - erm - viagra box. Who knew the park was such an exciting place?! By the time we reached the bin, we had gathered six sacks of litter, so a very worthwhile stroll in the park, well done!

Today's session was an extra special one for Clare, who was completing her 100th good deed! Take a look though the photos to see Clare's first good deed, back in May 2017, at Sprinkbank Community Garden. Clare has divided those 100 deeds pretty much equally between GoodGym Lewisham and GoodGym Bromley and can always be counted on to welcome new people, help out as back-marker and to delight us all with her extensive collection of awesome leggings. Well done Clare!

Our next get-together is on Monday, which is a very special occasion...our fourth birthday! Join us for a 5k round-trip to Crofton Books and some post-run pizza at Mamma Dough :)

On a fine July evening, 25 runners took a 5km round-trip to help out at GRACE in Lee.

Thank you Oli for our marvellous title pun and others throughout this report.

Were you up at Hilly Fields on Saturday morning? Did you see a group of people picking up litter? That was us! The park is particularly messy at this time of year, with people having picnics, but not taking their rubbish home. We're having a regular litter-pick before parkrun, details for this Saturday here. The parkrun was a place of great jollity this week, with Jacqueline hitting her 250th run (wow!) and Vic celebrating her birthday. It was also pacer week and it was great to see some familiar faces helping others reach a goal.

NEWS

• Many of you took on the Big Half earlier this year and I know some of you felt inspired to give it a go next year. Well, now's your chance to grab a place! We have a few community places for £10 each so, if you are committed to taking part, email me with the subject heading 'Big Half'.

• We had Simone from the Lewisham Local Card with us this week, hearing all about what we do, why we do it and how it makes a difference to us and the people that we visit. To find out more about the card and to register for one yourself, have a look here.

• This week Louise hit her 50th good deed milestone! This is quite speedy work, with her goal being to reach this point within a year. She totally smashed it, with a fair bit of GoodGym tourism and a few weekend missions. Well done Louise, here's to the next 50!

It's always lovely to welcome new faces to GoodGym Lewisham and all our Lewisham Love this week goes to Daniel and Jez, who were joining us for their first ever GoodGym group run (it was great also to see Charlotte and Sophie, who joined us after a break).

A very big thank you this week to Emma, for leading up front and to Amber for back-marking. We had a little warm-up to get the heart racing, before heading out along Lee High Road to help out at GRACE. At the task, Louise split us into four teams, with each group heading to a different part of the space. We had:

• TEAM PAIRLESS WHISPER - sorting through shoes, pairing them up, then putting them in the appropriate place (there might have been a fair few odd shoes left over!)
• TEAM BAGG(SY)ING - sorting clothing into various categories, bagging it up and moving it into the storage space
• TEAM IT'S COT TO BE-BE-BE-BE-BE-BEE PERFECT - reuniting various bed and cot parts that had been mixed up and sorting out the screws,dowels and instructions
• TEAM BUGGY - checking over and reassembling some buggies that had been mis-matched

Each team worked with great commitment, as time rushed by. There were moments where it looked like the clothes might not make it into the bags, or the screws, which had been ordered and laid out so meticulously, might not be matched with their bed or cot. We shouldn't have worried though because, in true GoodGym Lewisham style, we wrapped everything up in the last few minutes, ready to run back to base for a very quick 'plankerpillar' - good work!

Next week we will be visiting our good friends at Seniors, this is a longer run, of around 7km (with views!) and will be led by Conroy, sign up here. In the meantime, I would like to wish strength and determination to Kim, who will be taking on her first ever ultra distance event at the weekend, at the amazing Race to the Stones. With the support of Tom, who has tackled the longer distances before. They will be covering 100km over two days and camping en route. I'm sure you'll agree that Kim has been on an incredible and inspiring running journey and we will be behind them all the way, willing them to push on to the finish.

Go Kim! Go Tom! You can do it!

Peeling off layers and getting hot under the buff (it's a stretchy scarfy thing, OK?), an impressive 31 runners covered 5km and tackled a whole host of tasks at Voluntary Action Lewisham.

It never fails to amaze me how many people turn up on a grotty, grey, wet evening in February, all in the name of good! No first-timers tonight, but it was lovely to welcome Julia, who joined us for the first time at our starter session last week, also to say hi to Bliss, who has been away and to welcome back Kate, who used to come way back in the day, but has been busy becoming a parent! On another happy note, our very own mission man, Stephen, was showing off his lovely wings - a rather special new red t-shirt marking his 100 good deed milestone. A good sprinkling of Lewisham Love to you all.

Big Breakfast

Did you see us on the telly?! Yes, I know, we've been on the BBC before, we've done podcasts and we've featured in various articles, we're old hands at this media lark. This time we were filmed during our river wading session last Saturday, with the little feature being aired during yesterday's BBC Breakfast. It seems all our mums were up and ready, remote controls in hand, eager to see us in action. Meanwhile, many of our runners were out there smashing the miles, in preparation for the Big Half in two week's time (or the Bath Half in Emma's case). It was lovely to see some really great support amongst our runners, with Kim and Helen off out towards central London, Amber running a half-marathon - her furthest run yet, Conroy sharing a long run (and post-run drinks) with Frances and a few other GoodGym members and Juliet, who couldn't get to her planned race, deciding to tackle 20km just for fun. Amazing.

Here we go round the Mulberry Centre!

We were visiting another brand new task tonight, exciting times! This week our run took us over to New Cross and The Mulberry Centre, home to Voluntary Action Lewisham (and other organisations and groups). With Stephen back-marking, we headed out to Deptford, enjoying some Winter Olympics-style slalom, through the detritus of the market and shops - still packing up for the day - and were soon passing The Albany Theatre (where we will be going in a few weeks) and over to VAL. Here, we were met by Rachel, who told us about the various tasks and divided us into smaller groups (31 people remember, that's a lot of organising!). The jobs for tonight were:

• Moving some heavy furniture to the lower floor
• Painting the stairwell
• Painting the bright yellow toilet (great colour-match there Rosemary!)
• Re-potting some baby spider plants (possibly one of our most unusual tasks to date?!)
• Cleaning up the droplets of paint and scrapings from the wall
• Checking out another space for some future painting

With such a large group and limited space and supplies, there was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing, with new jobs being picked up once others were finished and some last-minute sponge-grabbing to ensure all of the paint was wiped away (excellent work here by Monika, who dealt well with those people who just couldn't put the their brushes and rollers down!). With just enough time to grab a biscuit (thanks Rachel!) and take a group photo, we gathered our belongings and headed back towards Glass Mill. Farewell to Vic, who lives nearby and had already run a half-marathon this morning, as you do and also did her 25th good deed this evening!

Glutiful!

I had planned a really tasty glute-focussed fitness session but, by the time we got back, it was stretch and go-home-to-eat time. We looked forward to our last group run for February next week (already?!), which means a celebration of our Heroes of February (still time to edge up the leaderboards!) and a return to VAL to finish off the painting and anything else that might need our attention. Keep up all the amazing running this week everyone and I'll see you at parkrun, or next Monday for more of the same good stuff :)