Ten treemendous athletes covered 5.5km of running whilst gathering discarded Christmas trees for recycling.

It was great to see some familiar faces back after the Christmas break and also to welcome a new face - great to meet you Claudia, welcome to GoodGym Bromley!

Now, this January Challenge we're in the midst of, what's going on?! For those who don't know, the aim is for the GoodGym-wide community to do more good deeds and run more kilometres than ever before. When I checked our placing in our division, before I left this evening, we were in - ahem - last place but, after our run, we had shifted up to SECOND PLACE!! Woo-hoo! You know what you need to do: link up your Strava or Run Keeper for your mileage to count and get out and do the deed(s). I mentioned a little starter session that's happening in our neighbouring borough, Lewisham, on Saturday - a chance to tick off another good deed and you could even tackle Hilly Fields parkrun beforehand :)

We'll never fir-get this

As we all gathered at our start point, a shaggy green shape appeared in the window. We quickly realised it was Louise, waving the tree she had found on the way - great work Louise, you win on eagerness to get started! After a brisk, shakeout warm-up, we sent Tim off to retrieve the other tree Louise had spotted, but of course he came back with two! Jogging down the next street, sharing the weight, we soon made these up to five, so five trees in the first five minutes of our run! We did register at this point that we had quite a long way to go with these heavy weights!

Feeling pine

Running whilst carrying a large tree is, not surprisingly, quite a challenge. You can't see where you're placing your feet and you can't always see where you're heading (if you're at the back). This meant we were a bouncing chain of greenery, with occasional shouts of 'Tree roots!' and 'Bollard!' (yes bollard). This sight prompted a fair few grins from passers by and, when we reached the high street, some jolly toots from drivers. By the time we reached the park we had amassed seven trees, some of which were pretty huge. We then had the additional challenge of getting them over the fence, to the already full drop-off point. No problem! A few heave-hos, a handy road cone or two and they were safely deposited.

With newly free hands, we ran off in different directions, with enough time to gather some more. As we were so close to the park by now, you would imagine everyone might manage to walk their trees a street or two, but no, we found another two trees, wide of girth. Time now to run back. Oh how we flew, feeling light and free and we even had time and energy to pause by Penge East station (now sprinkled with pine needles, sorry) for a swift little fitness session. Great work everyone, don't forget to stretch those quads and glutes after all that up-down action!

Stretching back at base, we looked ahead to next week, when we will be running the shorter distance to Melvin Hall, this time to clean the windows - bring your discerning eye, we want those windows to sparkle! Have a great week everyone and keep up the running and volunteering, we can smash this challenge!