13 runners were carried on the wind through Penge this evening, covering 3km of running and also the walls of Melvin Hall with paint.

Thanks this week go to Helen for her marvellous title pun.

Lots of amazing running going on again at the weekend! Well done to Louise and Stuart, who joined in with the GoodGym London long run, meeting runners from other areas and ending up in Greenwich for a post-run drink. Nice! Great work from Clare, who not only ran 18km, but slipped a challenging 10k race into the middle! The other rather special news this week is that Louise went on her first coach run - this is where you are paired with an older person for a weekly social visit. Quite often the people we visit are isolated and might not see anyone for days, so Louise is doing something really great :)

No newcomers this week, but how lovely to see Dan after a little break, good to have you back Dan!

Hallright on the night

We warmed up a little, what with yesterday's milder weather being a big old tease and the wind whipping the cold air around our lycra-clad bodies. Our run wasn't too long, taking us down to Melvin Hall for more painting (we're getting there!). As I ran, I heard about the route that our Sunday long runners went on, it sounded great, a sunny day and a riverside run! We also chatted about our neighbours being on BBC Breakfast at the weekend, fancy. On arrival at Melvin Hall, we were met by Kathy, who showed us down to our space, passing us the tin of primer as we went. Hannah got stuck straight in with this, enjoying covering up the bands of darker colour at last. The rest of the group filled trays with white paint and got rolling.

Is this alwhite?

A few minutes later Louise appeared, 'I'm pretty sure we used magnolia in the 'peach room' before...' Oops! Back came the trays and we quickly returned the paint to the tub, washed the rollers and started again...with the right paint! With a committee meeting in the adjacent room and an antenatal class in the main hall, we tried to keep our talk quiet (not easy) and missed out on my usual banging tunes ('Hoorah!' say my runners).

Painting the town (lucky) red

In the corridor, Stuart and Stephen were talking about Chinese New Year. Now, I hadn't intended for this to happen, but I seem to be making a weekly list, so this week we're finding out people's Chinese zodiac signs.

• Stuart - Ox (steadfast, solid, a goal-oriented leader)
• Stephen - Pig (extremely nice, good-mannered and tasteful)
• Hannah - Snake (seductive, gregarious, introverted, generous, charming)
• Adele - Rat (quick-witted, clever, charming, sharp and funny)
• Jane- Rooster (practical, resourceful, observant, analytical, straightforward)
• Rachael - Dog (loyal, faithful, honest)
• Harriet - Golden Dragon (energetic and warm-hearted, charismatic, lucky in love)
• David - Pig (as above)
• Louise - Tiger (authoritative, self-possessed, has strong leadership qualities, charming)
• Dan - Sheep (creative, thinkers, wanderers, unorganized)
• Clare - Tiger (as above)
• Kate - Water Snake (as above)
• Helen - Tiger (as above)

How interesting that all the tigers congregated in the same room, the collective noun for a group of tigers is a 'streak' or an 'ambush', no comment! As we are now in the year of the dog, it seems Rachael is meant to wear lucky red, how appropriate!

Having painted everything we could in the time we had (including our own clothes in places, though Kate gets all the cheers tonight for her awesome painting onsesie!), we washed our equipment and packed it all away until next time. We didn't dare use the kitchen to wash up this week, with it having been newly fitted and looking very lovely (thanks to the new local Bunnings store).

Talking of which...I had planned for our return run to go via the recreation ground, but took the wrong road, so where better to lunge ourselves silly than Bunnings' car park?! It was all about the glutes this week. It's very easy to let your quads and hamstrings do the work when you're running but, if you really want to feel the force, you need to engage your glutes. A couple of rounds of lunge variations and we certainly knew where our glutes were located. Stretching them out, we contemplated next week (sign up!) and Stuart suggested we also hang around afterwards for a drink (and food if you like, it is hungry work, after all!). Good thinking Stuart. See you then!

A very lucky thirteen took off through Penge to help sort through food donations at Living Well.

With it being Valentine's eve, this was our last chance to run ourselves towards the Love GoodGym badge on Strava. A few have already done so, having run one hour in a session between the 1st and 14th of February, great work! There has been some super running going on, with Molly covering lots of miles, it turns out she has a half-marathon at the weekend, good luck Molly! Also on the agenda for tonight's pre-run briefing was Ian's first mission. It sounds like it was a less-than-straightforward mission to start off with, but this doesn't seem to have put him off! Missions can be anything from changing a light bulb to moving furniture, but always involve helping someone when they are finding the task difficult and also spending a bit of time chatting and helping them feel less isolated. Well done Ian.

Tonight we welcomed first-timer Kate with open arms, hopefully making her feel at home!

We had a flipping good time!

As it's half-term, we were visiting one of our favourite tasks, at Living Well. We can only visit here during school holidays, when the regular Tuesday night Scout group take a break. Since our visit at the beginning of the year, the container had been sorted a little more, but still needed our attention to make things more accessible. Rowena was telling us that many of the regular volunteers are daunted by the thought of having to find anything in the container, knowing that it might involve a fair bit of lifting, shifting and searching. Our job, then, was to pull out the crates, take them to the church to be sorted and organised and to return them to the container, where they would be stacked in order.

Having such crate fun we could barely container ourselves!

Forming three teams, we had Ian and Conroy (with input from others) keeping track of activity in the container, passing crates out then, as the space became more manageable, grouping foods together, so they can be reached easily by volunteers. Inside the building, the food bank store room was being cleaned and reordered by Kiri, Hannah and Molly, while the rest of the group shuttled to and fro, carrying heavy crates and sorting them, ready to return to the newly stacked container.

Bean me up Scotty!

Thank you Kiri for that one!

During the task, a few people mentioned feeling peckish and, with it being Shrove Tuesday, I decided to do a little survey into what people like on their pancakes (n.b. some of these are what people prefer and some are what they were having for dinner).

• Cath - spinach, beetroot and feta/creamy mushroom (fancy!)
• Emma - jam and peanut butter (crunchy, of course)
• Stuart - salmon and cream cheese
• Alice - sugar and orange juice
• Louise - bacon and maple syrup
• Kate - maple syrup
• Molly - sugar and lemon juice
• Hannah - marmite and banana (controversial)
• David - avocado and poached eggs, on sweetcorn and courgette pancakes (show-off)
• Conroy - peanut butter
• Ian - banana (with pretty much any combo, but probably not marmite)
• Kiri - nutella
• me - berries, yoghurt and maple syrup

With time ticking away the end of our task creped upon us and it was time to return everything to the container, where the crates were now easy to reach and clearly grouped. It seemed like we went from having tins, bags of pasta and boxes of tea strewn across the floor to everything being neatly packed away in about five minutes - excellent! As Rowena thanked everyone and told us about how much this work will help things to run smoothly, we were given some chocolate eggs to nibble, a sugary treat to get us through the very quick fitness session that followed (where it turned out Cath is a pro at mountain climbers!).

Thank you everyone for working so well as a team, this will make such a big difference to Rowena and her volunteers.

Next week we will be returning to Melvin Hall to get our paint on again. Sign up here and join us for a bit of roller fun.

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!