For our last group run of 2018, 22 runners covered 5k and helped dig, shift, sweep and gather at Beecroft Garden Primary School.

Thank you once again to the punmeister, Oli, for this week's title and some puns within this report. He should probably get the award for most commitment to punning in 2018...

We've had a bumper weekend of festive missions, with Emma and Monica helping an older person with their garden and Tom, Marta, Nykolette and Conroy helping at a community mission, distributing the King's Christmas Trees...where Nykolette took her commitment to another level. Ahem.

Well done to Oli, who bagged himself a Hilly Fields parkrun PB, hot on the heels of his New York Half-Marathon last weekend. Great work!

Brick and tired

After some knee-tag fun and drills to warm our bodies (it's getting hard to plan a warm-up or fitness session that doesn't cause people to fall over!), we ran up and over to Crofton Park, with our wonderful back-markers, Caireen and Marta keeping us together - thank you. As we arrived, we were greeted by a gorgeous ginger cat, who seemed wholly unconcerned by 20+ bouncy people wandering in (cue me having absolutely no resistance to picking him up for a cuddle). The Sensory Garden is coming along nicely and we could see the steps now taking shape, but there was plenty more digging to be done.

Christmas sledging

With our most eager diggers grabbing gloves and tools, another group waited patiently to lift and shift the heavy soil to the sacks, a great upper-body workout! A smaller team worked swiftly on breaking up a twiggy branch, snapping and twisting...and chatting, whilst around the front, Jo and Olivia worked on leaf-clearance with a junior helper. Time ticked by quickly, with the bash, bash, bash of sledge hammer on brick helping everyone keep time, like a very well behaved chain gang!

Once tools were put down, Gemma's son proudly announced that they had festive treats for us and everyone made their way over to enjoy mulled wine, mince pies and delicious fruit - thank you so much, what a treat! I felt a little mean breaking up the Christmas party, but we did have to run! With a glow in our cheeks and a smile on our faces, we made our way back to Glass Mill, for a festive-themed fitness session, that of course involved 'Fiiiiiive bu-urr-pees!'

Well done everyone on an amazing year - it's our third birthday in a few weeks, so we will do a proper round-up of the year then - and I look forward very much to seeing you all again for our first run of 2019, on January 7th. In the meantime, keep running (there are parkruns as normal and additional runs on Christmas Day and New Year's Day) and do get in touch if you need a few words of encouragement!

See you in 2019!

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!

An incredibly determined and resilient 22 runners took on a 7km run and shifted a skip load of junk at the WIldcat Wilderness...in the pouring rain!

Thank you once again to pun-meister Oli for this week's delightfully apt title pun!

I was very excited this week, to share some rather lovely news, we have been nominated for a Mayor's Award for community involvement! This is pretty special, because it acknowledges each and every one of those people who have been on a coach run, mission or group run in Lewisham in the almost three years we have been running - that's a lot of community involvement! Well done everyone! On November 30th, there will be a special reception at the Civic Suite, where we will learn if we are one of the four winners (although being nominated is honour enough, alongside the other amazing organisations that we will have the pleasure of meeting/catching up with!).

As always, we were delighted to welcome a new runner into the fold, Lewisham Love to Eve, who deserves ALL of your cheers for turning up on possibly the wettest group run we've had!

With it being way too muddy on our usual grassy warm-up spot, we went a little off piste and used the arches area, underneath the railway line, to warm up - keeping you all on your toes! With Caireen and Rosemary (welcome back!) as back-markers, we headed out towards Ladywell Fields and on to Catford. Gathering up a couple of strays along the way, we met Maria and Jill at the gate and heard about this wonderful community space and the work that goes on here. In the entrance, there was a massive skip and Maria explained that we would be collecting all the waste material that has been uncovered, as paths have been cleared, then bringing this by wheelbarrow (or with our bare hands in some cases!) to the skip for collection later in the week.

Soak and glory

Gloves were put on, head-torches were lit and we hung up our smashing new portable lights along the path, to make our journey visible (thank you to the Lewisham Assembly for our lights, they really are fantastic!).

We had experienced a bit of rain on our run, but at this point the heavens opened and we really were challenged. It was incredible to see the determination on people's faces, as they persisted in lifting, shifting and carrying lengths of wood, rusty metal, sacks of random scrap and, in Oli's case, a toilet (what is it with Oli, he manages to find one at every task?!). At the skip, Caireen kept an eye on proceedings, making sure everything went in safely and with some form of order. With a steady trail of barrows weaving along the path, a pretty big dent was made on the pile and I shouted out that we had just five minutes left - cue a mad rush to fill the last two barrows and a decision by Damian and Stewart to drag a heavy sack the whole length of the path, there was no way they were leaving it behind!

Skip to the end

Using our fancy new lights as spotlights, we managed to capture everyone in a group photo before getting ourselves warm again with a brisk run back. Those who have been to the Wilderness before were keen to point out how special it is in the daylight - you can go along outside our group runs to help at volunteer sessions or to workshops and events that are held at the weekend (have a look at the calendar here).

I must admit to finding the cold wind and the driving rain hard work this evening, so what an absolute joy to hear newcomer Eve saying how much she was enjoying herself and, as we ran, hearing Clare comment on how beautiful things look when you're running, how we notice things differently....this is what it's all about.

Next week we will be running to one of our favourite annual tasks, putting up decorations at Seniors. This is definitely the time to dig out your Santa hats and add some sparkle and lights to your ensemble! Sign up here to join us for a festive fun run. Talking of festive fun, a few people were asking about the Run up to Christmas. We did this last year as a group/team and found it ever so motivating, to keep us going through the party season. You can sign up here to commit to running up to Christmas and to know that you will have our support and encouragement all the way, whilst raising money for MIND.

See you next week for more of the same!

Running under a sky filled with sparkle, 21 eager athletes covered between 5 and 7km and delivered many flyers for King's Christmas Trees.

Our top class title pun this evening comes from Emma, who shared it on the the run out, now that's worthy of a cheer! You will also see some beautifully crafted wordery amongst this report, from regular punner, Oli.

Talking of cheers, I started the evening with a little round-up of the Heroes of October. I haven't done this for a while, so thought it might be nice to celebrate some achievements, but none of the October heroes were here tonight! Maybe give them a cheer for all their cheering (Clare - 617), being cheered (Vic - 247), distance covered (Vic again - 166km!) and good-deed-doing (Nykolette - 10). I also mentioned our Christmas social, which is happening on December 12th, at the Catford Constitutional Club. Please sign up here if you are coming, so we know how many to book for. Yum.

We had two absolute first-timers joining us tonight, a big welcome and all our Lewisham Love to Emily and Jonny, we hope you enjoyed your GoodGym debut.

Flyer-works display

I handed over at this point to Simon, who is from the King's Christmas Trees project, so he could tell us all about the fantastic work that they have been doing now for ten years. We heard how the sale of the trees funds the weekly feast for a whole year, providing hot food at a drop-in, with 4500 three-course-meals being provided last year for rough sleepers and vulnerable people in the local area. Our task this evening was to help to spread the word about this project, delivering flyers in the Telegraph Hill area.

Letters entertain you

After a brief warm-up, with Ian's team just about winning the game of over and under, we gathered together, flyers in hand, with Amber acting as back-marker, making sure nobody got left behind as we ran along Lewisham Way towards New Cross. As we went, we regrouped at crossings, pausing to look, open-mouthed, at the fireworks popping all around us. We were soon at the foot of Jerningham Road, the start point for our flyering. Splitting into smaller groups, I assigned roads to everyone, along with a few little tasks to keep us focused:

• Taking a group photo by our road name

• Spotting an interesting item/door/name/garden ornament

• Carrying out a wall-sit for 30 seconds (or more!), with photographic evidence

• Coming up with a smashing pun for the run report

First past the post(box)

I ran up and over Jerningham Road, giving a little nod to the road I used to live on as a student, many years ago. At the top of Telegraph Hill, I could see far and wide, colourful stars filling the sky. It wasn't long before our first runners made it up the hill, with Team Pepys powering up (though 'powering up' is maybe not the term to describe their 'wall sit', ahem). As they still had a few flyers in hand, they decided to keep going for a few more minutes (I think there was a competitive edge between Oli and Tom...). More red t-shirts appeared, so I did a quick head-count and we gathered for a group photo (thank you all for contributing photos to this run report too).

It was interesting running back a different way, exploring some new roads and very nearly losing everyone as they scattered along Shardeloes Road, feeling the urge to continue flyering! Soon, we ran down and over towards Lewisham, sprinting back in to Glass Mill. Really great work from everyone, teamwork at its best, well done. Next week we will return to Beecroft Garden Primary School to work on the sensory garden, so expect a 5k run, a good physical task and possibly some Hilly Fields fitness session fun ;) Don't forget we have a community mission on Saturday as well, another chance to do good! Sign up here to help out at the bulb planting session in Hither Green.

See you soon!