On our last group run of 2019, 22 sparkly superstars covered 500m of brisk walking to raise money for the London Air Ambulance at Lewisham Station

It's been a long time since I led a group run, so thank you to Emma for encouraging me to take the lead again this evening, for our last group run of 2019 (of the decade, in fact!). I took the opportunity to thank Emma, Kim and Amber for doing such a brilliant job of leading the runs in my absence, keeping us all moving and doing good.

Tonight's task was a very unusual one. We were invited by London Air Ambulance to sing carols and raise funds at Lewisham Station. With our task venue being just across the road from our start point, it meant we had the perfect chance to walk together and catch up on the way (Emma did offer to lead any particularly keen runners on a loop to the station, but weirdly, nobody jumped at it). We did, however, warm up, with a game of heads, shoulders, knees and cones, followed by a variation on the body parts theme.

We were joined this week by two first-time GoodGymmers, so a very big welcome and all our Lewisham Love to Jo and Leyla.

With accompaniment from our pianist Chris, we soon got going with our caroling (a big thank you to Chris, who stepped up following a Twitter request!). The piano on Lewisham Station is open to anyone passing by, with confident commuters often entertaining fellow travellers. Tonight we added words, bells, smiles and some very enthusiastic bobbing. Each time a train stopped at the station, with passengers pouring out, we were greeted with some bemused, but mostly smiling, faces. Some chose to pause and enjoy the music, some joined in and some were spotted filming the action. We even acquired a fan, Jim, who stayed for our whole 'set', even requesting 'O Holy Night', which really tested our range!

We think star caroler has to be Louise, who took a break from bucket holding to sign 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' in BSL. We all enjoyed this so much that we made it our finale, with everyone having a go at singing/signing along.

Thank you all so much for a wonderful evening, I skipped home, with a huge grin on my face!

We will return to group runs on Monday January 6th, with a visit to Seniors. In the meantime, we have a last-minute push tomorrow for our friends at Big Red Box. If you can make it, even just for a short period of time, do go along. If you would like some fresh air and exercise between Christmas and New Year, we have a lovely community mission in Hither Green, planting saplings at the train station embankment, details here.

Well done and thank you to everyone who has joined us this year, on a group run, helping on a mission or visiting an older person in their home. I look forward to more of the same in 2020, when we will be celebrating four years of doing good in Lewisham!

Happy Christmas lovelies x

Thank you Jacqueline for the pun!

A smaller than usual group gathered in Glassmill foyer, debating whether to go for layers with it being an indoor task and then I felt slightly bad breaking up all the chatting but it was time to go out and brave the cold and wind!

This evenings task was to Crofton Books, one of my favourite tasks and one that I ALWAYS come away from with more books and recommendations.

We arrived at Crofton Books, to find Vic, Jacqueline and Sarah ready to get stuck in with whatever tasks Jason had lined up for us.

First task was to split into 2 groups and 1 group began to hang sheets in the entrance hall to protect the books on the shelves behind and then helped bring in the Christmas Trees (some of which were huge!!) and line them up in the hallway. The other group armed with gloves and bin bags, did a quick sweep of the side garden for any rubbish and moved some bags.

The remaining few (especially those dressed for dealing with books), stayed in the library and began organising the books as the BBC are visiting on Tuesday and I could hear the regular questioning of the alphabet and the reorganising and shuffling of books to make space for those that had been found in the wrong place.

The group began to regather in the library to warm up after the outdoor tasks had been completed.

There was more sorting, a Christmas tree made out of books and picking and wrapping of books with added quotes for presents. I began gathering people up and announcing we were on minus time (is that even a thing?!) but I didn’t want to cut anyones quote writing short.

We eventually gathered for a group pic, saying goodbye to Jason, after avoiding getting locked in the front garden, we began to make our way back towards our start point.

We (and the vinyl record with no cover) made it back to Glassmill, we had a quick stretch and discussion about what carols we could sing next week and how my dinner just kept sounding better and better (it was good!).

See you all next week, singing voices at the ready, for our final task of the 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!).