Last night 13 runners ran 6km to weed at Bell House

Southwark News

• The next GoodGym RaceTeam race is East Farm Frolic run by the wonderful White Star Running. Distances are varied - 10km, half marathon, marathon and a 12 hour race you can take on with a team or solo. I'm running the 10km, we've got 37 signups already. Come and meet GoodGymers from around the country for some muddy, traily fun in Dorset. Sign up here.

• Soon GoodGym will be rolling out community missions - this means turning up to tasks that we can't usually reach on a weekend. We don't meet at Old Spike, but run there individually (or in groups). You don't have to have a DBS check for these. They're going to be an awesome way to reach places we can't get to on a Wednesday night. Let me know if you have ideas of particular places to go!

• A huge shout out to Stuart, Helen and Anna who joined us for the first time last night!

That's enough of the business

Last night we gathered at a rather stuffy Old Spike sniffling and eye-rubbing due to the insane hayfever. I'm convinced its mixed with some delightful pollution round these parts... After a headcount and a warm up we split into two groups:

• Team 'leg stretch' headed off at a stiff pace and included a lap of Dulwich Park taking them to 4.8km for their run out.
• Team 'we're going to get there on time' led by Girija ran directly there and got to work before the others arrived.

We came we saw we weeded

Sarah from Bell House set us to work weeding infront of the house. We spent a good 25 minutes tugging, digging and hauling out weeds (and some old chains!) and then popped inside to have a look at the exhibition being held. The choice to do that had nothing to do with the free wine...! Sarah and Chloe were absolutely thrilled with how much we got done and took a lovely team photo of us outside the house. It makes for a pretty hilarious photo!

We took the way home easy although everyone was absolutely flying down Barry Road (yes it is called that!) which is much more fun to run down than run up. As we reached the last set of lights we set up a game of chase the hare. Stuart volunteered to be the hare and I set him off at a speedy pace and three seconds later the whole group had the challenge of chasing him down to Old Spike. No one caught him this time... but there will be more rounds, just you wait!

Great job everyone, Sarah and Chloe were thrilled and I'm particularly looking forward to doing some stuff with them over winter.

See you next week! Lucy

7 runners ran 5km to spread the GoodGym word in Southwark

Come hell or high water every Wednesday evening runners can be found gathering at Old Spike Roastery to do some running and some good in their local community. Last night was no exception! We spent our Valentines spreading love... (in the form of GoodGym leaflets).

A big welcome and hello to Emily and Erik who joined us for their first GoodGym run

We braved the rain and the wind for a quick warm up on the green before heading off to an undisclosed location which turned out to be... Telegraph Hill. What were we doing there you ask? The clue's in the name! On reaching a vantage point we admired the view for as long as the weather would allow (looking forward to going back in Spring when it's lighter!).

Our task? To deliver GoodGym leaflets to the good people of Telegraph Hill. How did we do it? The runners split into two teams on either side of the road and did a leaflet relay, the front runner posting a leaflet to the house at the top of the hill and coming back to tag in the second runner who posted one at the next house. We focused on two things whilst going up the hill: having our arms at 90 degree angles to our body and swinging them like a pendulum and taking shorter steps than usual. After one leg of the relay each, the two teams finished their respective side of the road together and off we headed home, popping the last few leaflets in letterboxes as we went.

A big cheer for Hanna who did her 47th deed tonight - nearly at the big 5-0 Hanna let's do this!

A great task well done team, I expect the calls to come rolling in anytime now.

See you next week!