This evening our group’s focus was not just on the task in hand but also on honouring an amazing milestone for a true Lewisham legend as it was Jacqueline’s 500th good deed!!

And what a Mission to tick off her 5th century, one of our favourites in fact, as after being benched this time last year we returned to the Big Red Box; a project run by King’s Church which organises donations to support families and individuals across South East London struggling with food provision via delivery of lovingly prepared Christmas hampers.

This evening we had a clear target; to prepare 106 hampers which required delivery before the end of the week. On arrival, Alice provided a quick briefing detailing the switch from the previous use of cardboard boxes to cheaper and more sustainable bags-for-life. This meant that 212 individual bags would need carefully filling and pairing, since 2 bags = 1 hamper.

“Feel Good About YourElf!”

With the bag-to-hamper ratio clarified, and alongside other lovely volunteers, we set about one of our most satisfying festive tasks and channeled our inner-elfs as we first prepared stack of bags then took to the production line, progressing along the always-well-organised tables in sequence and adding in prescribed amounts of all the ingredients for a Christmas feast!

When our layout area became busy with filled bags, we’d switch to carrying hamper-pairs through to sit in discrete batches intended for specific deliveries, under Alice’s supervision and quality management.

As we passed a hundred bags (= 50 hampers, remember!), it was time for a break and a restocking of the production line, with fresh pallets of tins, packets and cartons being lifted up onto the tables to ensure continued smooth production.

“A big red milestone at Big Red Box”

After around an hour, Santa’s whistle blew and we were told we had hit our target in double-quick time (as you might expect from the hamper-speed record holders!). This left us plenty of time to stack away dozens of now-empty pallets, ready for the next delivery of donations, before a group congratulation of Jacqueline on her amazing milestone!

If last nights sing along wasn’t enough fun, some of our Goodgym lovelies came along for the very last push for big red box.

It was all about the boxes tonight, We had Christmas songs playing, sorted and packed boxes secretly hoping to of beat last years total of 2226 boxes.

The last lot of boxes will be going out to vulnerable families across the boroughs. It felt really good knowing that so many people would benefit from tonight’s community mission.

We were also lucky enough to wave the wonderful Alice (Big Red Box Boss) off on maternity leave with a red box full of baby goodies. We wished her good luck with the new addition to the family.

With that, all that’s left is to wish you all a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year.

Wow, what an evening!

Firstly, a very warm welcome to our new runners Romona, Taz and Zac - go and give them all a cheer! And also worth a huge cheer is Vic's fantastic achievement of a 24 month streak of group runs! That's two whole years of running and doing good, what a wonderful woman!

After a rather dog-eat-dog (or rather, runners-watch-dog) warm-up, we soon set off towards Lee, stopping at pretty much every set of traffic lights along the way. Thanks to the lovely Jacqueline, Clare and Oli for helping to keep such a big group together and safe along the busy route to Lee.

As always, there was plenty to do at Big Red Box HQ. There was a huge new donation to sort, many bags of which had been collected by our friends at Hilly Fields parkrun over the weekend. The packing station needed to be replenished, boxes had to be assembled, and pallets lined up ready for the 5 minute challenge.

You gotta be tin it to win it

We got not one, but two attempts at the hotly anticipated 5-minute challenge. For the uninitiated, this is one of the most glorious human chain experiences you could ever hope to be a part of, with each empty box making its way from one end of the corridor to the other, being packed full of one of each type of food, before being closed up with a lid, and stashed on a pallet ready to be sent out for distribution.

(Pal)Let battle commence!

After a fantastic first attempt where 35 of us managed to pack 36 boxes in just 5 minutes, a 2019 record. We restocked our food stations, assembled a few more boxes ready for round two. Nicely warmed up, and either enthused or intimidated by my constant shouts of "pack smart" and "tesselate harder", we managed a whopping 52 boxes in our second round! A Big Red Box all-time record! If you add in the extra boxes we finished filling after the countdown was over, that's well over 100 boxes in less than an hour. Just think what a difference that will make to so many people in our community over this festive period.

Official heavyweight boxing champions

There's plenty more festive fun to be had in the next few days, including putting up decorations at St Christopher's Hospice with our friends over in Bromley tomorrow night (nice to see you Ian!), the GG x Xmas Xtravaganza! where you can meet GoodGym runners from far and wide, distributing Christmas trees for Kings who we were supporting this evening, and a trip to Crofton Books next week where no doubt the Christmas tunes will be out in force.

Thanks to Marta for this week's run report title, and to Oli for the smattering of puns (as always!).

For our last group run of 2017, an incredibly hardy 32 runners covered 5km of running and sorted and packed boxes of food for Big Red Box.

Unless you've spent the past few days under your duvet, which might not have been such a bad idea, you will have noticed The Weather. Yesterday we had rain, we had sleet, we had snow and then we had ice. I never doubted though, that we would have a foyer full of runners, eager to good. It was great to see some visitors this week, all the way from...Greenwich! It was also lovely to meet last week's newcomers, who enjoyed our group run enough to give it another go, great to see you back.

EXCITING NEWS TIME!

After becoming a dad last weekend, we were all very surprised to see James out and about! Congratulations on becoming a dad to a beautiful little boy and feeling energetic enough to come out and run with us, amazing! Admittedly, he did look slightly shell-shocked.

I just felt too shy

This is what Marta had to say, when I asked why she kept quiet about Saturday's starter session being her 50th good deed! This illustrates perfectly the kind of person Marta is, putting her head down and quietly getting on with the task in hand, whilst offering support and encouragement to her fellow runners. Well done Marta, it's a great achievement (and we look forward to seeing you in your black t-shirt in the new year!).

Special guest warmer-upper!

On Sunday, a big group of us will be off to Greenwich for the Run Through 5 or 10k race. A while back they asked us if we wanted to lead the warm-up (!), so of course we jumped at the chance. Amongst our runners, we have our very own personal trainer, Amber, so who better to take the lead?! Tonight was our chance to practice and get a feel for what we will be doing in front of around 500 runners on Sunday. Thank you Amber, your warm-up was fun and we definitely felt ready to run, with our muscles firing up against the cold.

Time to run!

When we run in this direction, we do have to contend with the crazy new road system that is now central Lewisham. Cue lots of hopping on the spot, waiting for the lights to change. Thanks here, go to Caireen, who very kindly spent time with a cyclist, who had been knocked off her bike and was clearly in shock. We - thankfully - haven't had to deal with anything like this on a group run before, so thank you to everyone for being patient and understanding. Thank you also to Conroy, who led our big group away and to Stephen (or 'Elf' as he should probably be known now) and Chris for being our back-markers this week.

Once we arrived at the Big Red Box, it was all systems go! Nykolette and Emma had arrived before us and were already rushing around, sorting through donations! It was great to see Emma back from her travels and how impressive that she was out in the cold, doing good stuff at what was 7am for her! Joining us on our run this week was Mike, who is a big part of the Big Red Box, he and Alice quickly got us all organised, with bodies moving around like red ants, picking up items and finding the right crate.

Inside, was a team of lid-makers, folding, popping and tucking, in fact so much so that they had very soon created an actual tower of red lids. At the other end of the corridor, Jo and Mridula were building the corresponding boxes, again, creating an installation to rival anything Tate Modern could put in their Turbine Hall. Once enough crates had been filled, they were carried into the corridor and a human chain was formed, ready to fill the Big Red Boxes. Boxes were passed along, items being placed inside and, when they reached the end of the line, a lid was popped on and the box was lifted onto the trolley.

At this point, Alice set us a challenge. Each team of volunteers has had a go at the Five Minute Challenge, to see how many boxes they can fill in five minutes. We're not competitive or anything but, OK, we are SO competitive! Our aim was to beat the 41 set last week, but why not aim for fifty? Alice counted down aaaaahhhhhhnd, they were off! All along the corridor were shouts and cheers, boxes being shunted along, tins being thrown in, chocolates being placed atop and all sealed with a Christmas pudding and a box of mince pies.

In we went, trying to quickly scan the stacks of boxes to see if we could work out if we'd managed it. Mike kept us in suspense, telling us that, in the first week, 28 had been packed, the second week was 32 and last week 41. In five minutes, our super group of packers had managed...

Drumroll please...

...46 boxes, taking us to the top of the leaderboard!!! This made our total for the evening 80 boxes of food, to be taken and distributed to families, individuals, older people who may be alone and people getting back on their feet. Mike told us that what we were doing was giving hope to people who might not feel much hope, making their Christmas a little bit blessed.

Well done everyone.

As we stretched back at Glass Mill, we wished everyone a happy Christmas and reminded ourselves of the change of day in January, for one day only we will meet on a Wednesday, 3rd of January (otherwise we would have been meeting on New Year's Day!). Next Tuesday, the 19th, is our Christmas get-together, over at the lovely Catford Constitutional Club - please sign up now if you're definitely coming, so we can confirm numbers. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you all in Greenwich Park, bright and early on Sunday, to either, run or cheer and definitely to warm up afterwards with a nice big hot drink and a mince pie.

With a chill in the air, a massive 32 runners kept things moving as they covered around 5km and sorted and packed possibly the same distance in Big Red Boxes!

Thank you Monica for this week's title pun!

Lots of newcomers and visitors tonight, so all our Lewisham Love goes to Lya and Malcolm, GoodGym first-timers, Pier, who was filming and interviewing us for an article and Simon and Indigo, representing Big Red Box and sampling our own particular brand of running fun (I know that they are both keen runners, so they had no problem keeping up!).

As is usual now on a Monday evening, we like to celebrate the achievements of the previous week. Tonight we all stepped back and looked on in awe at the speed demon that is Conroy (once he'd removed his spooky mask. We knew it was you Conroy, you laugh with your shoulders, we don't need to see your face!). He has been working hard towards the goal of a sub-20 minute 5k for a while now and, on Friday, he did it! AMAZING!I am seriously considering naming this part of the evening 'Nykolette Time!', with our resident superwoman making a regular thing of a Sunday morning race, followed by a mission, now that is the epitome of getting fit and doing good!

News just in! It seems one of our runners quietly went about doing his 50th good deed this week! Congratulations Sean! We will miss you and your enduring support (and Gingerbread antics) over the next couple of months, but we look forward to seeing you back in the New Year wearing your black t-shirt!

With these big groups, our circle name-check is taking a while to get through, but I think I'm remembering everyone's names (give me a nudge if not!). I might have to reintroduce the name/ball game, though we might be there all night. We played a front/back/side-to-side sort of game, just for fun and then moved on to some dynamic exercises to get those cold muscles moving. A big thank you to Eva, Conroy and Rosemary for bringing up the rear as back-markers tonight, making sure nobody was left behind, a very important role here at GG Lewisham.

Human chain!

We were a bit giddy this evening, having been looking forward to this task for a while, so it didn't take us long to run over to Lee, where we were met by Alice, who told us all about the incredible work Big Red Box does in south east London, collecting donations of food at local supermarkets and sorting these into packages, to be given to families and individuals who might otherwise go without at Christmas. The collections have been happening recently and crates of food were set out, ready for us to sort. At one end we had the red boxes themselves being constructed by those nimble of hand. Along the human chain, items were picked and packed, ensuring that the box was made up of a good combination of staples and treats, these were then put onto the big trolley, which was wheeled into the next room, where the boxes were stacked.

A production line of goodness.

Alongside this corridor were rooms with more crates, which were grabbed and brought out to replenish stocks at the tables. Back and forth went tins of soup, bags of pasta and the occasional advent calendar, Christmas pudding or bag of chocolate coins. Time passed quickly and the tables started clearing, the minutes ticking away. At the beginning of the evening, Alice had told us the goal was to build and fill 60 boxes, she now informed us that we had managed...120!

We're out of custard!

Prising the last crates out of the hands of Chris and Marta, we gathered now in the box room (not that kind of box room, it's much bigger and, well, boxier) to take a group photo. Simon told us how our work this evening will contribute to the wider project and also about how the church feeds many people at a weekly feast, using funds raised by selling the Kings Christmas trees. We know it's still only October (just), but we felt a little festive and shouted 'Merry Christmas!', which prompted a chorus of 'Winter Wonderland' as we left (sorry Marta!). We will definitely be returning, so keep an eye on the website and sign up!

Next week's task is still being confirmed, but you can sign up anyway and treat yourself a to a lucky dip of good stuff. Also, as we're feeling a little Christmassy, why not sign up to our pre-Christmas race and give yourself a goal to work towards over the next few weeks? Talking of goals, as #planktober draws to a close, how about joining us for #activember? Every day in November, get out and do something active, go for a walk at lunch time, dust off your bike, go for a swim, try something new (yoga, anyone?), oh and run! Share your activities on Strava and Twitter (@GGLewisham) and encourage each other :)

Well done everyone, another task well and truly smashed!