With a smile on their faces and joy in their feet 32 runners covered 5km and sorted and packed over 100 boxes at the Big Red Box.

Oli has done himself proud this week with our splendid title pun (and some more sprinkled throughout this report).

What a week! I can barely breathe with excitement! On Friday, I went to the Civic Suite with Nykolette and Emma (and Jacqueline, with her junior parkrun hat on), to celebrate our nomination for voluntary contribution in the borough. It was a lovely evening, meeting other groups, hearing about their amazing work and feeling all the energy that goes into volunteering in Lewisham.

On Saturday, a whole gang of us were up at Hilly Fields parkrun, volunteering, pacing fellow runners, taking on 5k and bringing donations for the Big Red Box. We also celebrated Vic's 100th parkrun (she celebrated by pacing, of course) and later realised that Jacqueline had completed her 200th good deed!

Meanwhile, down the road in Catford, we had Nykolette, Caireen and Helen helping the King's Christmas Trees to distribute their trees (remember we delivered flyers for them a few weeks ago?). Now, they didn't even realise, as they helped out, lifting, shifting, wrapping and handing over the trees, that Caireen and Helen were both completing their 100th good deed! They are both long-standing members of our Lewisham family, with Caireen having been with us right from day one. They have both been on exciting running journeys, helping their friends along the way and have become great friends to many of us - thank you both for your dedication over the past three years.

That's not all folks!

This has been a week of BIG celebration, with two of our regular runners also hitting a milestone. Congratulations to Lucy and Rebecca, both hitting 50 good deeds and soon to be seen wearing their lovely black t-shirts. Lucy joined us in our first year and Rebecca just over a year ago and both have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into this thing we call GoodGym. Thank you both for being such wonderful members of our group and I really look forward to running alongside you next year.

Joining us for the first time this week was Jo, welcome Jo! We also had some visitors, with David coming over from Lambeth and Beth joining us from Southwark (for her 670th good deed, yes, The Beth). Lewisham Love to you all x

Boxing clever

After a quick warm up, we ran as a huge group along Lee High Road, with our milestone queens, Lucy and Helen back-marking all the way. Arriving promptly at the Big Red Box, we were met by Alice and her team, who very quickly told us about their amazing work and showed us what needed tackling tonight. We had three teams:

• TEAM QUALITY CONTROL - Going through some packed boxes, making sure they contained everything on the list and restocking them if not correctly filled (cue head scratching and searching for random items).

• TEAM SORT - wading through the many bags of donations (which possibly came from Hilly Fields and Catford parkruns on Saturday!) and categorising them into type and placing them in the corresponding crates.

• TEAM MUSCLE - lifting, shifting and stacking full crates (check out the photos to see just how strong they were).

Pallet yourself go

As the crates were making their way inside to the storage area, I suggested to Alice that we might have a 'five minute challenge', which caused great excitement! Our box sorters continued their good work and the rest of the group assembled on the packing line, ready to pack and pass, seeing how many boxes we could fill in five minutes. With Tom at one end, passing empty boxes along the line, and Bradley at the other, on quality control and lid placement, the energy levels were high, with boxes were being filled at a phenomenal rate! With '45 seconds left!' being called, the last push was on and a quick count showed we had filled over ninety boxes in five minutes!! With the last few finished off, we did over 100. Amazing.

Packtically perfect

Saying our goodbyes and wishing the team well with the rest of the work before Christmas, we headed back to base (with a brief wall-sit en route, no Tom, you can't use the bus stop!). I had planned our Time Trial, but there wasn't enough time, maybe next week. Instead, we launched our December challenge, Christmas Log - a plank a day for the rest of the month (with photos posted on Twitter, aw, go on!). Next week we will be on a 5k round-trip to Crofton Books, where there will be a number of festive tasks to tackle (including lifting and shifting Christmas trees if you fancy it!). Please sign up here and join in.

Good luck to Oli in New York at the weekend, enjoy your 13.1 miles of sighseeing, we're not wishing we were there, really we're not!

Have a great week!

With a twinkle in their eyes and a jingle as they went, 28 of Santa's little helpers ran 7km to put up Christmas decorations at Seniors.

How lovely to welcome Jenny, who joined us for the first time, as we ran over to one of our favourite tasks of the year! Lewisham Love also to Sara and Morag, who were on tour for this special occasion.

Dates for your diary!

• This Friday I will be attending the Mayor's Award evening at the Civic Suite in Lewisham, with Nykolette and Emma. After the event, we will be strolling over to the Bottle Bar Shop to celebrate our fantastic nomination for community involvement. Join us from around 8.45pm.

• On Saturday, Hilly Fields parkrun will be collecting donations for the Big Red Box (who we are visiting next Monday). To help make this happen, we are having a GoodGym Lewisham takeover! If you would like to volunteer, there are lots of roles available, including pacing, so sign up here and email hillyfieldsoffice@parkrun.com. If you would rather run, just come along - and don't forget your donation (and barcode)!

• Don't forget to sign up to our Christmas social on December 12th!

Follow the leader!

After a warm-up that included star shapes (of course!), we were led by Run Leader Kim over (and up!) to Stanstead Road to meet Cathy at Seniors, with Caireen and Helen back-marking, to keep us together, thank you!

When we arrived at Seniors, we met Lucy, who had very kindly brought over a surprise for the volunteers at Seniors. We had decided it would be nice to be able to give our friends a gift to help their Christmas celebrations sparkle, so had clubbed together to buy a new tree (and some people had also brought along decorations - thank you!). Have a good scroll through the photos and just look at Cathy and Phyllis's faces! :)

Simply having a wonderful GoodGym time

With the festive tunes playing and the chocolate coins disappearing, we had a few different tasks to get on with:

• assembling and decorating the new tree (which proved trickier than we had hoped!)

• putting up a tree with a blue and silver colour-scheme in the ballroom

• painting the noticeboard in the entrance hall (well done Eve, you were cast out slightly there, away from all the action!)

• putting up lights everywhere

• hanging tinsel, garlands, decorations and baubles across the window

• organising the bookshelf

It takes two to untangle

All credit to Vic for the above pun, created as she and Conroy patiently unraveled some Christmas lights (we can't blame whoever took them down last year, since that was us!). At this point we really did need to stop, but people were very determined to put up that last piece of tinsel in their hand, or afix the lights that they had been struggling with for a while or, in the case of Kim and Amber, put up a whole tree and decorate it in five minutes flat! But we did have to go and, wishing everyone a happy Christmas, we promised to return in the new year.

Wrapping up with a stretch back at Glass Mill, we looked ahead to next week's run, where we will visit the Big Red Box to help sort through donations. This will be another amazing task, so do sign up!