It's Wednesday night, which means it's a GoodGym Southwark group run night. Yet, there's something a bit different about tonight...

The first to arrive at Old Spike was none other than newbie, Tamsin, who came a few weeks ago for a docs check, but this was the first time she was doing a GoodGym session. It just happened it was on a social night as well as a special occasion. The small coffee shop started to fill with keen GoodGymers as there was a high turnout for tonight's indoor task at Salvation Army Nunhead.

As we approached 18:45, Sam began with his speech and ensure to include the special mentions:

• Lindy had earnt her wings after reaching 100th good deeds! Six months or so after hitting 50, very impressive!

• Sam in just under four years became the 4th person in GoodGym history to hit the coveted 1,000 good deeds milestone! 😲

After all the pleasantries, Sam informed everyone of tonight's ice-breaker question, which was meant to be last week's for Chinese New Year....but he had a second question too: What is your favourite Chinese food? and/or What is your favourite GoodGym task?

With thirteen people, I will try to remember a few answers: fortune cookie, mapo tofu, anything with "crispy", anything with "soya sauce", egg tarts, duck pancakes, dumplings and wonton soup were the answers for the first question. The second one was a variety with a few moments of regular tasks like Thorlands Community Garden, Old Alleynian Rugby Club, Surrey Docks Farm and Galleywall Nature Reserve as well as newer tasks like Kingswood Arts and tasks from outside the borough in Bristol, Hackney and Lewisham.

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A thousand reasons why

With Sam leading from the front and Daryl backmarking, we ran from Old Spike to the middle of Peckham Rye and looped back to Nunhead. The 2k run took us over 15 minutes with traffic lights etc.

Waiting for us at Salvation Army Nunhead was Anna and our contact, Hilary. They gave us a warm welcome as we entered through the charity shop entrance.

The task tonight was to clear out the room we had cleared out a few months ago of books, but it had before a dumping ground. Hilary wanted us to sort the books out and take the other items down to the charity shop. The room would become a sorting room. That was one task, the other was to shift what we create in December away from the cozy corner to the middle part as Hilary wanted the corner space to be used as a delivery space for the massive amounts of donations they have been getting.

Sam split the team and made Anna sub-team captain, yet by the end of it...everyone was helping everyone out.

With Sam's playlist booming out of his speakers, everyone got in the groove and swing of things as we started to sort out the donations. We were so efficient, Hilary asked us to slow down. After 20 minutes or so, we were clutching at straws on what we could do for the last 10-15 minutes, so Sam told the team to browse and get 1 or 2 books as a treat.

As we said our goodbyes to Hilary, we headed out to celebrate Sam and Lindy's major milestones as well as our anniversary at the Old Nun's Head (next door). Some had to go back to Old Spike to get their belongings, but joined the gang later and just in time for Drag Karaoke Bingo! Some had the vegan food of offer, everyone had drinks and almost everyone had a slice of the lovely beetroot cake Paulin had baked. Thank you Paulin! We made sure we got our customary "milestone birthday" photos for Lindy's 100th and Sam's 1,000th before we celebrated GoodGym Southwark's 7th birthday....they grew up too fast 😢 We did join the Drag Karaoke Bingo (thanks Anna for putting us all in), but we didn't win any prizes....Steve was close....a line away or was he... 👀

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! A special thanks to Daryl for backmarking the run, Paulin for taking the photos (at the task and after) and Anna for being sub-task captain. Another thanks goes to Tamsin for showing up for her first group run! Hooray! And a massive thank you to everyone for celebrating this major milestone with me.

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Thank You Hilary

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Hilary as it would have normally been Tiziana or even Polis, who would like us in. However, Hilary was kind enough to not only let us in, but gave us tasks that lasted the whole session...granted we did have to slow down as we were quick.