Donning gloves and taking to the streets and park, ten tremendous runners covered 3km of running and filled eighteen bags with litter.

Lovely title punning this week from Louise, thank you!

This week's run started with a little celebration of Stephen's half-marathon success last Sunday at the Big Half - well done Stephen, what a lovely t-shirt and medal! We also heard about our super coach runners Tim and Louise, who are reducing isolation every week, by visiting an older person for a chat. We mentioned Ian too, who had run off to Bexleyheath to help out at an emergency mission, all this good work going on outside our weekly group run! We heard as well from Hannah and Stuart, who have both been embarking on a bit of GoodGym tourism, with Hannah visiting Hackney and Islington (shoveling manure on both occasions!) and Stuart joining Camden's mega-task last week at the Southbank Centre, shifting concrete - good work both of you!

No newcomers this week, but what a treat to have Dom with us! Dom usually runs with our neighbours down in Croydon and is also part of the GoodGym coach team, pairing older people with our runners. He said GoodGym Bromley had been on his bucket list, so he was happy to tick it off. Nice.

This week we were embarking on a bit of litter-picking, as part of the Keep Britain Tidy, Great British Spring Clean. We all put on some gardening gloves, grabbed a blue bag and set off into Crystal Palace Park (after a little warm-up fun). Our friend Penny from the park had pinpointed a problem area for us to tackle first of all, so we skipped by the dinosaurs (I think they were sleeping) and curved around towards the farm. With a handful of head-torches and the floodlights from the stadium, we managed to just about make out the litter amongst the bushes! Very quickly, everyone scattered, pouncing on whatever they could find and, my, did we find some odd things?! Strolling and chatting, we stumbled upon what seemed to be a popular drinking spot, which soon filled up a few bags and worked our way back towards the farm, scooping up any discarded wrappers as we went.

Decanting our finds into a couple of bags, we tied them up and left them neatly by the dustbin, then headed up towards Crystal Palace station, another area of rich litter pickings post-rush-hour. Now picking up the pace, we dipped and ducked, watched by the static traffic on Anerley Hill, before turning in to Thicket Road. On a residential street like this, you can easily pick up the bottles and bits of paper and pop them into a nearby recycling bin, maybe we should all just give this a go on our own roads, little but often? By the time we returned to the park, we had filled eighteen (yes, eighteen!) bags with litter! Here are some of the finer treasures in our haul:

• a cheese knife, complete with chunk of cheese (nice work Hannah!)

• an unopened bag of mini-eggs (tasty find Dom!)

• a (sadly) broken litter-picker (how apt Stuart!)

• numerous vodka bottles (good spotting Joe!)

• a bag of (dog) poo (I really hope you've managed to scrub away all traces of this Helen!)

• but winning on all counts, with tennis balls, a ping-pong ball, a cone base and a tyre is Bradley!

All that and still enough time left to do some smashing hill repeats (the BEST session to slip into your week, to build strength, encourage good form and work on endurance). As we stretched, we talked about Louise's epic challenge, coming up this Thursday, when she will run up 42 floors (932 steps) in the Vertical Rush - good luck Louise, we look forward to hearing all about it! Stuart also has his own challenge over the weekend, tackling his longest run ever, in training for his half-marathon in May. Next Tuesday we will be visiting a brand new task at Penge Congregational Church, where we will be painting the entrance area, sign up and join in! See you then :)

In sub-zeros our thirteen heroes took on 5km and many, many books.

That's right, sub-zero, time for all the layers! How lovely to see Alice and Cath back after a little break (I say break, work took over so it's not like they had their feet up!) and to welcome David, Helen and Joe back after their first visit last week - they weren't put off by the crazy hills! We also welcomed a visitor all the way from GoodGym King's College London, welcome Sophie, I hope we made you feel welcome south of the river!

To get the evening going, we basked in our own glory a little, having won our division in the GoodGym January Challenge; excellent work everyone who took part! We also warmed ourselves up with some dynamic stretches and a few 'bounces', which it's impossible not to do when it's this cold! We were very excited this week to be heading to a brand new task. It's always lovely going somewhere new and running in a different direction, so off we went, towards Sydenham Community Library.

Our run took us past some very grand houses, their beautiful stained glass prompting lots of 'Ooohs' and 'Aahhhs'! We were soon approaching the building and finding the entrance around the side. Here, we were met by Ilse, who ushered us in and told us what we would be doing this evening. The library is run by volunteers so of course, when they are busy doing to the day-to-day running of the building, seemingly small jobs such as cleaning the shelves, are overlooked. We were here to make a difference by pulling out the books in the children's library (which has 90 school children passing through on a Thursday!) and cleaning the shelves. Our taller members were tasked with giving the windowsills a wipe and to do a general dust and tidy up all round.

As everyone busied themselves with these jobs, I wandered around, taking photos and asking what we're all reading at the moment (and I might have shuffled some newspapers and flyers into neat piles, I like a neat pile). It was a delight to see just how varied our reading is:

• Stuart - The Fisherman
• Louise C - The Pie at Night
• Tim - Le Grand Meaulnes (fancy!)
• David - Stoner
• Helen - Homo Deus
• Joe - Prisoners of Geography
• Louise C-W - Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Cath - Swing Time (and Frog Belly Rat Bone)
• Alice - The Distance Between Us
• Hannah - The End of Eddie
• Jane - The Glorious Heresies and The Power
• (Sophie couldn't remember the name of her new book!)
• Me - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Isn't that wonderful? So much to talk about while we run!

The space was quickly filled with piles of books, carefully ordered, to be put back as they were found. Once wiped down, the shelves were refilled, with a bit of sorting in the process and some pauses to enjoy the illustrations. There was just enough time to dip in to the snacks that Ilse had very kindly provided, before we guarded ourselves to head back outside. I'm sure we will return soon, to continue these jobs and to do some much-needed painting.

Once outside, it seemed churlish not to venture into Home Park to have a play on the outdoor gym equipment. It's a great little set-up, somewhere to stop off on your run to do some body-weight exercises. Whenever I pass one of these park gyms, they are always busy, with all sorts of people having a go. Heading back up towards Penge, we took The Hill over the railway line at Penge East and reached our start point for some stretching. Next week is a visit to one of our favourite tasks, helping our at Living Well. Expect a slightly shorter run and a great lifting, shifting and sorting task at the food bank. See you then!

Don't forget, it's the GoodGym monthly social on Thursday, this time in Holborn. Details and sign-up here.

As the frost crept in, a tip-top ten took to the streets to spread the word about GoodGym and to climb a reaaaaalllly long hill.

First things first, it's the end of the month, so the end of our January Challenge. At the time of writing, we are in the lead in our division, with a marvellous 49 good deeds and a smashing 354km! It's a shame we can't put a lid on January right there, because our closest followers, Hounslow, have a run to do tomorrow evening and might just step alongside us. You know what to do everyone, get yourselves to a Wednesday group run! ;) We also took some time to celebrate our Heroes of January, with most of our leaders being absent this evening, but let's give them some respect anyway.

• Most good deeds: Hannah, with 6, followed by Tim, with 5
• Greatest distance: Tim, with 121.2km, closely followed by Molly, with 97.7km
• Most cheered: Hannah, with 62
• Most cheers given: Louise and Hannah, with 2 each (come on, I think we can be a bit more cheery than that!)

I think we all deserve a great big collective pat on the back for getting through the darkest, coldest and at times - remember January 2nd?! - wettest month, good work everyone! At the weekend, Stuart took on a 10k race in our local Crystal Palace Park. He did so well in the wind and mud, pushing hard all the way. Great work Stuart! (See his photo and lovely medal above).

Welcome!

How wonderful to welcome not one, not two, but three new runners this week! Let's give a big cheer to Helen, Joe and David.

This week we had planned to spread the word about what we do here in the borough of Bromley. Sadly my stack of GoodGym flyers didn't arrive on time, so we were working with what I happened to have at home. There are a few roads nearby that have the most beautiful little cottages on them, so we headed there and discovered we had just the right amount of cards to cover this spot. Our group split into pairs and took off, cards in hand. I waited on the corner, smiling at passers by and chatting to one resident, who had been somewhat startled when he came face-to-face with one of our runners as he left his house to walk the dog! He was intrigued to know more, so our task was working!

Running up that hill

Once the word was spread, it was time for our run and fitness session. Our regulars seemed keen to point out to our newcomers that 'it's not normally like this!', though I pointed out that there isn't really a 'typical' group run, it's different every week! With a little more time to push ourselves, we took a longer and better-lit route towards Crystal Palace Park, which included a hill...a very long hill. As we always say, you have to learn to love the hills around here, because there are many. Good work everyone, it did go on a bit! With some downward skips, we found a gate to the park that was actually open and stepped carefully, enjoying our now peaceful, calm surroundings.

Seeking out some light, we drove our knees hard to the top of the steps and paused, overlooking the running track and sports courts, the perfect spot for a bit of HiiT! I think this came as a shock to the system, a longer run AND strength work?! Why not?! We were up, we were down, we were pedalling, we were jumping, we were planking and we were pushing. Excellent.

Next week we will be off out in our community, doing more good, sign up here. Don't forget, if you're on Strava, we have a February challenge coming up, where you can win yourself a special GoodGym Love Running badge. Have a look here and join in (and here is the GoodGym group, if you want to connect with other runners).

See you soon!