Waiting outside Old Spike Peckham was Maria and Alex, who had just come back from three weeks out in Australia, Japan and South Korea, so we caught up on his adventures as Lindy, James, Paulin and Josie, who came back for her two GoodGym session since her first back in January as she had other commitments on a Wednesday. However, we welcomed Sarah who came for her first GoodGym session ever! Welcome Sarah!

We knew Emma and Rosalind would meet Paulin and Rose at Denmark Hill Community Gardens and Richard and Jo, who was celebrating her 100th good deed tonight at Thorlands Gardens. However, before all that, Sam had to go through his customary speech and do the full version for newbie, Sarah. Just before leaving for a warm up, everyone introduced themselves and asked the ice breaker snap poll and question for tonight, since its Denim Day as well as Stop Food Waste Day, is it acceptable to wear double denim and what tips would you give for stopping food waste?

It started off mixed for the double denim, but ultimately people would wear double denim. Whether they can rock it is another thing... People gave tips like using scraps for soup, stocks and snacks (batter your vegetable peelings and make it into tempura chips), using Too Good To Go and Olio apps, eating once a day, portioning and freezing food.

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Connected with nature

Since the group had to be split in two for the two tasks we had tonight, Maria and James opted to go with Paulin to Denmark Hill Community Garden whereas the rest went to Thorlands Gardens to meet Simon. Yet, they had to ensure they were nice and warm to avoid injury. With Maria backmarking for Paulin's group and Lindy for Sam's, they went off in different directions.

The Denmark Hill Community Garden group continued with what they started last week by deepening and widening the trench, but they didn't get the chance to plant the hedge saplings. This will be done this weekend.

The Thorlands Garden group arrived to find Simon and Richard in the "Walled" garden getting the tools ready. Jo came shortly afterwards to wear her wings as she hit her 100th good deed tonight! Hooray! We split the team in three: Lindy and Sarah took the wheelbarrows to do the woodchip run as Richard and Josie used the mattock and dutch hoe to turn over the soil and take out the weeds as they pushed to connect the woodchip paths. Finally, Alex, Jo and Sam did some weeding as it had been raining a lot recently. As the wheelbarrows of woodchip came through, these were put on the cardboard that had been laid out after the soil had been turned over and raked to be flat.

We completed the task within the allocated 40 minutes as we were encouraged by the 90s tunes in honour of denim day taking us back through the years. Tune after tune!

After acknowledging our great work with a few group photos and putting the tools away back in the "Walled" garden, off we went back to Old Spike Peckham and made it back for 20:30 to meet the others for a good stretch.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! Rose and Simon were really pleased with what we got done as per usual. I hope you'd enjoyed your first and second sessions, Sarah and Josie, respectively. Thank you to Maria and Lindy for backmarking their respective runs.

After two weeks off, we were back with a bang! Quite literally as 25 runners showed up for GG Southwark's first group run of 2024. With last year's average being 12 runners, it was amazing to see such high numbers and 4 newbies! A warm welcome to David, Jenny, Josie and Roberta. We also had new GoodGymers to this area including Laura and Lucy.

Gathering in the intimate space that is Old Spike Roastery, everyone listened in on Sam as he delivered his typical GG speech including his ice-breaker question which was all about the darts due to the World Darts Championship final. After introducing themselves, each runner had to answer:

Underrated or Overrated: Darts as a sport?

It was a close-call, but underrated won the snap poll.

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Live and let live

With the rain starting to chuck it down, we skipped the warm-up in the alleyway as Sam led from the front and Maria backmarked to ensure no one got lost or left behind. During the 2.5k run over to Telegraph Hill, we met up with Mikhail who ran from home to the task and at the task, Jessie found us.

Having reached what felt like the top of Everest... we split the group into teams of five with a taskforce member as their team leader. We had Team Daryl, Team Emma, Team Katy, Team Maria and Team Mikhail. With a healthy competitive competition going on with the five teams heading out in different directions as they had 30 minutes to find as many Christmas trees to bring back to the drop-off point and covering as many kilometres and metres as possible.

After 30 minutes, the results stood as such (trees x kilometres covered = final weighted points):

• In 5th place, Team Mikhail collected 2 x 🎄 and covered 2.2km 🏃‍ = 4.4 points
• In 4th place, Team Maria collected 3 x 🎄 and covered 2.71km 🏃‍♀️ = 8.13 points
• In 3rd place, Team Katy collected 2 x 🎄 and covered 4.1km 🏃‍♀️ = 8.2 points
• In 2nd place, Team Daryl collected 3 x 🎄 and covered 3.63km 🏃‍♂️ = 10.69 points
• In 1st place, Team Emma collected 4 x 🎄 and covered 3.12km 🏃‍♀️ = 12.48 points

This meant Team Emma won and collected a Quality Street and Winegum boxes for her team, which she kindly shared with everyone! It's still the Christmas spirit!

After our group photo, we said our goodbyes to Mikhail who ran home from Telegraph Hill whilst the rest of us ran back 2.5k to Old Spike via the front of Nunhead Cemetery. We finished off with a much needed stretch before heading over to Angel Oak for our January social and to watch the World Darts Championship final. 180!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! Firstly, welcome to all the newbies and thank you to everyone who came out last night in the pouring rain. I appreciate the commitment and I am sure the Lewisham Council and neighbours of Telegraph Hill thank you too! The competitive fun task was done in an efficient manner, so thank you to my taskforce members for getting your teams coordinated and top marks on your time management too! Finally, thank you to Maria for backmarking the run. See you all soon!