For our first group run of the year 16 runners arrived at old spike, ready to get 2018 off to a really good start. While people signed in we chatted about the 10 things Rich had been advised to do on moving to London, one of which was come to GoodGym so he can already tick that one off the list. We also chatted about GoodGym’s January challenge and how Southwark is ready and willing to play our part in reaching an impressive number of good deeds and kilometres in January.

A last minute change of task meant that our journey there was as simple as walking through a door. The area behind the roastery is being converted into a community yoga studio so there’s lots of building work going on at the moment. Out the back there was quite a considerable pile of rubble that needed to be bagged up and moved round the corner, ready to be taken to the dump. With such an array of items in the pile it did bring back memories of a late nineties TV show but none of us really had the skills to make a functioning machine out of a lot of plaster board, hundreds of coffee cup lids, some discard chip paper and an old toilet. After half an hour or so we felt like we’d all had a good upper body work out and set off on our run. Half the group came with Tom and I to do a 3km circuit of Peckham Rye and half went with Matt on a slightly extended 5k.