Embracing the hills of Lewisham, a fabulous 26 runners headed south side to Seniors, to tackle a number of tasks in the garden, running 7km along the way.

Welcome back and a MASSIVE thanks this week to Steve, who I was delighted to see returning, with his high-level punnery, just check out tonight's title, quality.

It's been another amazing week of pure goodness, with many runners visiting older people in their homes, either to help out with a mission, or for a weekly chat. We also had a pretty special community mission on Saturday, where a group of around 19 of us returned to St Mary's Church, to continue the painting along those many miles of railings. It was fun being able to spend a bit longer on the task and we certainly made a difference, reaching all the way to the entrance to the Therapeutic Garden! Great work team!

This week we welcomed two brand new GoodGym runners to the family, all our Lewisham Love goes to Louise and Naomi. We also showed the Lewisham way to Sara , who was visiting from our neighbouring group in Greenwich for the first time, welcome!

We did things a little bit differently this week, with our about-to-be run leaders Kim and Amber leading the way and me keeping things together a little further back (thanks also to Steve for back-marking). When we have a big group like this on a longer run, it can be easy to get split up and we certainly don't want to lose anyone! It was a gorgeous evening to be running through Ladywell Fields and pushing ourselves hard on those hills.

We were met at Seniors by Cathy, who quickly split people up into different teams:

• Team Lift 'n' Shift, moving heavy items from inside the building to the storage space underneath the window

• Team Paint, working on painting the tables on the patio, taking advantage of the hard preparation work carried out on a previous task

• Team Worm, constructing a water butt, which will become a wormery (this has to be one of our more unusual jobs!)

• Team Dig, clearing and digging over the vegetable patch to make way for more squashes

• Team Hardcore, gathering and wheelbarrowing some rubble trough the garden, to support the wormery

• Team Saw, working together to saw some wood into smaller pieces

• Team Smash, taking an old art crate and kicking and bashing the heck out of it to use the frame as a raised bed

Wow, that's a lot of tasks!

As we rounded off our visit here, Cathy told us about a few events coming up at Seniors. On September 12th is an open day, with lots of demonstrations and opportunities to see how the space is used then, in November, there will be a sing-along, with tea and cake - I'm pretty sure we have some splendid voices amongst our group, who fancies joining in?!

As is usual when we're over this way, we like to push up the hill to enjoy the stunning view from Blythe Hill Fields and it didn't disappoint tonight, with a beautiful sunset to our left and the city sprawling ahead of us. Our breathing steady again, we enjoyed the swoop down to Lewisham and a good stretch, back at our start point. Next week we will visit a brand new task, at Chelwood Nursery, so a 5k run in total. I will be enjoying myself on holiday, but you will be safe in the hands of Lucy, the trainer for GoodGym Southwark. Don't forget, as it's a Bank Holiday, our start point closes early, so we don't have access to lockers, travel light!

See you in two weeks, be good!

Over 40 runners joined in the GoodGym run at the Loves Trail Festival, combining running with doing good along the Gower Peninsula.

The Gower Peninsula is famous throughout the world. It is known for its long golden beaches, awesome surf and mystical coastline, where there are an abundance of secret caves and castles. It is the home of Bonnie Tyler, Catherine Zeta Douglas, and now for the Love Trails Festival!

The GoodGym run took place at 10am on Friday morning and was led by Manuel, Jack, Melanie and myself (Ben). The concept of GoodGym is simple, combining running with doing good. There are GoodGym running clubs in 43 towns and cities throughout the UK (42 are of them are located in England and 1 is located in Wales)

It was now time to give everyone at the Love Trails Festival a taste of GoodGym!

Everyone arrived for the GoodGym run at 10am, excited and at the same time curious as many of the runners had not been on a GoodGym run before.

Ben, who is also Swansea born and bred, reminded everyone about what they needed to be mindful of in order to remain safe on the run, stating that “despite what you may have heard about the Welsh, please do not chase the sheep,” and reminded everyone to careful with their footing as the terrain is quite changeable.

Let’s run to Broughton Bay!

Our route took us down the mountain boarding field, through fields where sheep were grazing and down country roads, climbing over fence stiles as we went. Because we were still all friends we stopped at the marshlands to regroup. A local, called Bev, took a break from her walk and began chatting to everyone. She started talking about the Welsh Culture and sharing words in the Welsh lanuage. Here are some of the Welsh phrases she taught us:

• Bore Da – Good Morning
• Wedi blino – Tired
• Da iawn – Very good
• Croeso i Gymru – Welcome to Wales
• Rhedeg – Running

Ben also said shared some riddles with the group and created a puzzle using 4 sticks and a stone that had to be solved before we could all move on.

Good news! Sophie solved the riddle which meant we could continue our journey. The run was scenic and warm at the same time as the clouds had begun parting and the sun was shining through.

After approximately 30 more minutes of running, over bridges and over a couple more stiles we had arrived at Broughton Bay.

Ready, steady, clean!

Ben challenged everyone to collect as much litter as they could and to try and spell out the letters LTF (LTF for Love Trails Festival, obviously) with all of the collected litter. He also laid down the gauntlet and asked everyone to report back on who could find the most interesting piece of litter!

As you read this you are probably sitting at the edge of your chair, filled with excitement wondering about what litter was collected, so here we go;

Items collected included:

• Half a rubber matt – A rubbish find by Will
• Glowstick – Found by Matt… it made his day (He also found a handful of straws!)
• String – Found by Laura!
• Ore – Tom found an Ore (I hope the person that the ore belonged to eventually made it back to dry land!)
• Pipe – Yes, Emma found a Pipe.
• Glove and ball – Sophie planned to celebrate afterwards at the festival bar
• Other items found included empty bottles of alcohol, a cool box, a chopping board

This is only a small summary of the items that were found at the beach. The group managed to collect 15 bags of litter in 25 minutes - this is what we would call in Wales a tidy effort at making the beach look LUSH!

Time for a beach game!

We’re all big kids so now it was time to play a quick beach game. Ben explained how frustrating it can be when you are running in a race and you are on track for your PB and how a pedestrian can sometimes walk out in front of you, inadvertently slowing you down and that PB becomes a long lost dream! Using the ore and a beach chair as boundary markers the field of play was set (That's good recycling for you). All of the runners stood behind the ore and they had to get to the finish line (behind the beach chair) without being caught by the pedestrian/spectator. If they got caught then they become a pedestrian/spectator as well (Yes – If you haven’t worked it out yet, it is very similar to British Bulldogs except we aren’t rugby tackling one another into the sand).

The game was a success! We had a winner and everyone had a fab time. It was now time to run back!

Lead the way!

Jack took one group of runners back a more direct route and Ben took another group along the beach and through a pine forest. The route back was stunning as you can see in the photos.

Thank you to everyone who took part in run to beach clean.

On behalf of Manuel, Melanie, Jack and myself it was a pleasure running with you. You can find where your nearest GoodGym is by clicking here. We hope you enjoyed your weekend down the Gower and visit again soon!

9 awesome runners ran 3km to help out at Christchurch School

It was a lovely sunny evening in Greenwich last night but because of the World Cup (which we won't talk about), our numbers were slightly on the thin side... but it didn't matter! We still got loads done! We were joined by new runner Pieter, hope you had a good first run with us!

We headed off a little earlier than usual and made our way towards Christchurch school, we didn't even need to be watching the match as we could hear the screaming England fans from the houses and pubs along the way and before we'd even got to the task we were 1-0 up... WOOO! Oh yeah sorry I said I wouldn't talk about it...!

Upon arrival we were greeted by Fiona and Patrick who are both part of the EGRA (East Greenwich Residents Association) who are involved with a lot of community projects in the borough. They had lots of jobs for us to do. The main one was moving the bags of gravel which we actually filled up a few months back! The place has absolutely transformed since the first time we visited which is awesome! A new beehive had been installed as well as an outdoor playground/learning space, so lovely!

After about 10 minutes, all the bags were shifted and we moved onto the big sacks of bark which required a little more muscle power! But again, after a few minutes, these were cleared and out of the way! NICE!!

Once the heavy work was done it was time to give the place a good watering and clear a whole bunch of weeds. There was also a spot of litter picking to do! Once the weeds were cleared, it was time to head back, but not before a photo of course!

A little jog back to the uni and we finished off with a quick little core blast and we were done!

Thanks for all your hard work yesterday! You got so much done so you should be really chuffed! See you next week!

It was back up Hangover Hill aka Meusli Mountain almost to the top of Brighton via Albion Hill tonight to finish off what we started way back at the beginning of January.

But first we warmly welcomed Emma & Lauren for their first GG experience, and also to Brighton native but Greenwich Goodgymmer Sarah. We love having new people and visitors so we were very spoilt tonight to have 3 of you! We also congratulated Michaelon equalling his PB at Hove Prom parkrun on Saturday and Helena for getting a course PB at Preston Park parkrun. Well done!

Before we set off we continued our focus on good running posture. Sometimes doing it wrong helps you realise when you’re doing it right so we played a game of rocks and feathers where you pretended to be carrying a heavy backpack of rocks to contrast with running light with a backpack full of feathers. And we carried our pretend feathers all the way up to the top of Hanover, which didn’t seem to cause any of you any problems at all. Awesome stuff!

Viv and David met us and set us to work clearing vegetation from a narrow path and bank at the rear of the council run property. This will enable the residents to access the garden and washing lines much more easily. We chopped back shrubs, pulled up dead grasses, swept the path clear, bagged up the debris and Jamie was a demon litter picker and filled an entire bin bag with rubbish. The final challenge was, like last time, getting all the vegetation into the back of Cllr David’s car! It was a tight squeeze but we just about managed it.

We squeezed in a quick fitness session focussing on glute strength with some short hill sprints, one leg deadlifts, lunge kicks and glute kickbacks before heading back to base where we wished Michael & Emma the best of luck with the Brighton Half marathon on Sunday. I’ll be there looking out for you to give you a big cheer, and of course you can give them a virtual cheer on the GG website.

Next week is our first visit to a school and this one has fabulous views over the city so sign up here.

(Apologies for lack of photos, various excuses incuding phone batteries, unfamiliar technology, dark and small spaces!)