As light faded, 29 invincible athletes ran out into the borough, to help at Luxmore Gardens, covering 4km along the way.

Thanks this week to Tom for our super title pun and also Oli, who has some marvellous puns throughout this run report.

What a weekend of top running! We had lots of people either running or volunteering at Hilly Fields parkrun, who were celebrating their sixth birthday. We had Tom stretching his legs up in Newcastle, at the Great North Run (RED ARROWS people, RED ARROWS!) and Kim - who is training for her first marathon (in Venice) - ran her longest run ever! This is all very inspiring. This week we had a couple of new faces, Lewisham Love goes to Amy, who was doing her first ever GoodGym group run and Sophie, who has visited many other GoodGym areas over the course of her 300+ good deeds!!

Our warm-up saw everyone being 'It' and everyone doing a fair bit of squatting. We also enjoyed some squatting hi-fives before heading out along the Lewisham Way towards New Cross. Thank you Tom for being this week's back-marker, possibly feeling the DOMS setting in as time went on!

Manure the one for me

Feeling sprightly, even on that hill out of Lewisham, we found ourselves at the task in record time, so took the opportunity to visit the beautiful mural that we prepared the wall for a few months back. Check out the group photo, it's really quite lovely. Lucy soon appeared, forks at the ready and showed us where we would be working tonight. There has been so much going on here since our last visit, with trees being pruned to allow in more light, a whole section of beds filled with plants and this area of soil being rotovated, ready for us to step in. To the side of the area was a huge pile of manure, warm and 'fragrant'. It was our job to dig over the soil and dig in the manure. Cue lots of activity, with forks, shovels and rakes being employed in the dig-over zone, wheelbarrows being run to-and-fro, tipping their contents, before running off again and a team of waterers trailing a hose along the path to fill cans and buckets, to water the plants that went in at the weekend.

Luxmore fun where that came from

It feels a lot earlier than previous years, but we suddenly found ourselves in darkness. Luxmore Gardens is a 'pocket park', so is surrounded by houses and enclosed by tall trees, but this was dark! It's time to dig out the head-torches (great work from Eleanor, who was debuting her new torch, looking good!). After returning all the tools, we ran back downhill (phew!) to our start point and the Monthly (erm, oops!) Time Trial. Oh yes. Those who fancied it could run one, two, three or four laps of Cornmill Gardens, which is pretty much 1km (and a Strava segment if you're into that sort of thing!). Well done to everyone who had a go and pushed themselves and also to our cheer squad, who did squats and lunges to keep warm.

Next week is a brand new task, up at Chelwood Nursery, where we will be working outside (head-torches please!). This means a 5k round-trip and some Hilly Fields fun on the way back, if you're really lucky. Sign up here to make it happen. As we stretched, Conroy told everyone about a lovely local relay race happening on Sunday in Hilly Fields. There are still places, so have a look here and sign up if you're interested, it's a really great cause to raise funds for. Good luck to anyone taking part!

See you soon :)