Peeling off layers and getting hot under the buff (it's a stretchy scarfy thing, OK?), an impressive 31 runners covered 5km and tackled a whole host of tasks at Voluntary Action Lewisham.

It never fails to amaze me how many people turn up on a grotty, grey, wet evening in February, all in the name of good! No first-timers tonight, but it was lovely to welcome Julia, who joined us for the first time at our starter session last week, also to say hi to Bliss, who has been away and to welcome back Kate, who used to come way back in the day, but has been busy becoming a parent! On another happy note, our very own mission man, Stephen, was showing off his lovely wings - a rather special new red t-shirt marking his 100 good deed milestone. A good sprinkling of Lewisham Love to you all.

Big Breakfast

Did you see us on the telly?! Yes, I know, we've been on the BBC before, we've done podcasts and we've featured in various articles, we're old hands at this media lark. This time we were filmed during our river wading session last Saturday, with the little feature being aired during yesterday's BBC Breakfast. It seems all our mums were up and ready, remote controls in hand, eager to see us in action. Meanwhile, many of our runners were out there smashing the miles, in preparation for the Big Half in two week's time (or the Bath Half in Emma's case). It was lovely to see some really great support amongst our runners, with Kim and Helen off out towards central London, Amber running a half-marathon - her furthest run yet, Conroy sharing a long run (and post-run drinks) with Frances and a few other GoodGym members and Juliet, who couldn't get to her planned race, deciding to tackle 20km just for fun. Amazing.

Here we go round the Mulberry Centre!

We were visiting another brand new task tonight, exciting times! This week our run took us over to New Cross and The Mulberry Centre, home to Voluntary Action Lewisham (and other organisations and groups). With Stephen back-marking, we headed out to Deptford, enjoying some Winter Olympics-style slalom, through the detritus of the market and shops - still packing up for the day - and were soon passing The Albany Theatre (where we will be going in a few weeks) and over to VAL. Here, we were met by Rachel, who told us about the various tasks and divided us into smaller groups (31 people remember, that's a lot of organising!). The jobs for tonight were:

• Moving some heavy furniture to the lower floor
• Painting the stairwell
• Painting the bright yellow toilet (great colour-match there Rosemary!)
• Re-potting some baby spider plants (possibly one of our most unusual tasks to date?!)
• Cleaning up the droplets of paint and scrapings from the wall
• Checking out another space for some future painting

With such a large group and limited space and supplies, there was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing, with new jobs being picked up once others were finished and some last-minute sponge-grabbing to ensure all of the paint was wiped away (excellent work here by Monika, who dealt well with those people who just couldn't put the their brushes and rollers down!). With just enough time to grab a biscuit (thanks Rachel!) and take a group photo, we gathered our belongings and headed back towards Glass Mill. Farewell to Vic, who lives nearby and had already run a half-marathon this morning, as you do and also did her 25th good deed this evening!

Glutiful!

I had planned a really tasty glute-focussed fitness session but, by the time we got back, it was stretch and go-home-to-eat time. We looked forward to our last group run for February next week (already?!), which means a celebration of our Heroes of February (still time to edge up the leaderboards!) and a return to VAL to finish off the painting and anything else that might need our attention. Keep up all the amazing running this week everyone and I'll see you at parkrun, or next Monday for more of the same good stuff :)

In a rush of GoodGym red, 33 runners covered 5+km and sorted through a mountain of clothing at GRACE.

It might not have been our birthday this week, but we still had plenty to celebrate. With it being the end of the month, we took the opportunity to honour our Heroes of January. This month's high(er) achievers were:

• Most good deeds: Stephen, with 11, closely followed by Emma, with 9
• Greatest distance covered: Sarah, with 214km, closely chased by Malcolm, with 209
• Most cheers given: Conroy, with 1430
• Most cheers received: Stephen, with 375

This is pretty impressive and might have been in part due to our GoodGym-wide January Challenge, which has seen us smash our distance goal, covering a collective 3974km and completing a whopping 201 good deeds (at the time of going to press)! I'm speechless.

Croeso!

We were delighted to welcome two brand new runners this week, Lewisham Love goes to Zoe and Clare, who joined us for the very first time. We also welcomed Birchlyn, who came along to our starter session on Saturday and came back for more. It was lovely, also, to see a few runners returning after succumbing to the lurgy, injury or plain old life. Our first-timers might have been wondering what on earth was going on, with all this talk of cheering and challenges and all the whooping and clapping. Throughout this report you will see names highlighted in red, which means you can click on them to view the runner's page, give them a cheer and check out their badges. Did you know you can also support someone? Click 'support' on their page and they will be added to your team, so you can easily keep track of all their good deeds and activity.

And they're off!

Tonight's warm-up was brought to you in conjunction with my ten-year-old son. He was keen to try and help me devise some new warm-up games and this one was fun and creative at the same time, we hope you enjoyed it :) With Monica and Anita taking the back-marker position, we were all set to run towards Lee. Once at our task, we were met by Claire, who had a mountain of donated clothing for us to sort through. With so many volunteers, the space was tight, but everyone very quickly found a spot and got stuck in. Monika and Emmet were pulling bags out from the pile and passing them along the chain to be sorted. At the other end, items were lifted out, assessed for suitability and put into the various sacks for either men, women or children.

Fancy pants!

It seems to be a tradition that we uncover some 'interesting' underwear on our visits here. So far we've had MASSIVE knickers, frilly knickers and, erm, not-fit-for-use knickers. Tonight was no exception, with Jacqueline finding the oddest bloomer-type things, Rosemary with her boxers and Emma with, would you believe it, dog pants?! Excellent rummaging pant-pickers!

As always, we were heading back out of the door after what felt like five minutes, saying our goodbyes and wishing Claire well with the next journey (our last sort had been packaged up and taken to Syria last week, GRACE are doing amazing work all the time). A brisk jog back along Lee High Road, breathing in all the tasty smells as we went and we were soon back at Glass Mill, with enough time to have a go at our Time Trial. The area of Cornmill Gardens outside our start point is just under 1km if you run around it four times. This Time Trial can be tackled in full or, if you prefer, you can do one, two or three laps. Even after running over 5km, people were keen to have a go, with really strong running all round. You can have a look at the Strava segment here, (if you're into that sort of thing).

As we stretched, we chatted about Simon's 'long' run this coming Sunday, the London Reject Runners London Marathon Run. You can join in for the whole run, or just part of it, finishing off with food and drink. Have a look here to find out more. We also talked new badges and how you can earn yourself a rather nice one by running for one hour between February 1-14th, sharing the GoodGym love. Join the Strava group here. Next week we will be heading out for more of the same, chatting, running and doing good. Sign up and join us.

Breaking all GoodGym Lewisham attendance records, 35 fantastic superstars ran 5km, took on a whole heap of tasks at Crofton Books and celebrated two years of goodness in our borough.

Thanks this week go to Caireen for this beautiful piece of title punning. There will also be a couple of masterpieces throughout this report, courtesy of our resident pun-machine, Tom.

Here we are, celebrating our second anniversary at GoodGym Lewisham! I can't believe how quickly this has gone! What an incredible two years we've had, with runners coming along for the first time, wondering what this is all about, saying they 'don't run', then becoming central to our group and - sometimes - going off and building towards bigger and longer running goals. I'm very proud of everything we have achieved as a group so far and here are some stats (correct at the time of going to press) to give you a sense of just what we've been up to.

• Total good deeds: 2809
• Missions: 128
• Group runs: 109
• Coach visits: 486
• KMs run: 36,916
• Cheers given: 55,961
• Cheers received: 36,645

One area that really stands out for me is the coach visits, 486 occasions where someone has visited an older person for a chat, so many hours spent reducing isolation.

Through our weekly group runs, we have visited many local organisations, helping to do those tasks that might otherwise get overlooked, or might take an individual days, or even weeks to tackle. At the weekend, we have runners heading out across the borough to help on missions, one-off tasks helping an older person with something in their home. This can be gardening, clearing a path, putting up curtains, or something seemingly as simple as changing a light bulb.

Two of our regular mission runners are celebrating a milestone this week, Nykolette reached her 50th good deed helping someone in their home, something she does often, fitting it in to a busy week, where she also visits an older person for a chat. On top of this, Nykolette manages to race most weekends (or even on weekday evenings!) and is part of our GoodGym Race Team.

Also on the Race Team is Stephen, who completed his 100th good deed at the weekend, alongside the top team of Nykolette and Helen. When Stephen joined us, he had just moved over from Ireland and 'wasn't a runner'. He quickly found his place in the group, building up gradually to 10k races, half-marathons and then going head first into the marathon distance. On Saturday Stephen also bagged himself a parkrun PB up at Hilly Fields, in pretty tough conditions! We're lucky to have both of you as part of our GoodGym family, well done!

Looking around, I could see a few faces who were with us at the start, two years ago and also a fair few new faces, what a week to make your debut! Lewisham Love this week goes to Olivia, Lucy, Tom, Gideon and Monika. We also had a couple of visitors, welcome to Channie, who usually hangs out in Greenwich and Simon, who has visited us before - revisits always welcome!

Pizza-pie and a little help from my friends

This evening was unexpectedly mild, after a stinker of a weekend (really well done to all of those who got out and ran!), but we still needed to warm up. An old favourite, shin/knee tag, a round of front/back/right/left (no, the other left!) and some good old stuck-in-the-mud got our heart rates up and ready to go. This week we were heading to the rather special Crofton Books, where Jason had a list of very varied jobs for us to tackle. Thank you to Stephen and Vic for back-marking on our run, ensuring we stayed together and didn't leave anyone behind.

Arriving at the task, we could see that Jason had worked hard to make sure we could get stuck in and choose from a selection of tasks, including:

• lifting/shifting heavy bags into the garden
• sorting through and pricing a stack of donated books
• pulling out and cleaning the IT area
• organising the children's books section
• creating a series of new category headers for the shop
• organising the shelves/putting books in the right section
• writing a poem

Yes, that's right, writing a poem. I wonder if any other GoodGym area has been set this challenge at a task...Our team of bards took up their pencils and put their heads together to compose a poem from GoodGym Lewisham to Crofton Books, a gift to be displayed for all to enjoy. Tom, Chloe and (a reluctant) Caireen set to with this, later joined by Emma and Chris. The laughter that rose from this area is a testament to just how much fun poetry can be.

Recently a new area has opened in the bookshop, with a great selection of vinyls now being available to buy. To help people decide, there is a turntable which, during opening hours, is accompanied by some headphones (sshhhhh!!) but, for our visit, was giving us the soothing tones of Elvis himself. Thank you. Quite soon it was time to wrap up all these jobs, with our poets in a slight state of panic, as their last line was unfinished. Chloe, our very own performance artist, took to the stage and gave us a gripping, topical, rhythmic and delightful rendition of the poem. As the end of the poem hung in the air, Katy called out her contribution, 'The last two years have been off the hook!' Perfect!

Deep pan-niversary meal

Running up and over Hilly Fields (you got off lightly here again!), with a pause to enjoy that twinkling view, we ran down towards home and the promise of the time-trial. Once again we had run out of time! One week, really, we will find time to smash that 1k challenge! Remember, it is a Strava segment, so you could pop along on your own and have a go! Instead we stretched, before those who could made our way down to Catford and the hidden gem that is Pizzeria Italiana, where we ate so swiftly that the proprietor commented on how hungry we must be! Once we had eaten our pizzas, out came the cake and we sang happy birthday to ourselves. Post-run socials are the best :)

Don't forget, on Saturday we have a starter session at Crofton Park Station Gardens, a chance to get some fresh air (in the daylight!) and a great way-in for anyone who isn't sure what our group runs are like and, with a shorter run, great for beginners. Sign up here and I'll see you in Hilly Fields! Next Monday we will be at GRACE, sorting through clothing donations, join us for a 5k run and a great indoor task.