The Christmas alphabet has noel!

30 GoodGymers got in the Christmas spirit last night for another week of running with GoodGym Camden!

We welcomed Laurel to the herd - hope you enjoyed yourself Laurel and found that GoodGym was as good as you'd hoped. Looking forward to seeing you with us again soon.

If you fancy getting ahead of the game and signing up for our last run of the year, get stuck in here!

As with all of our winter tasks, tonight was a double tasker; bed-making at the American International Church and Christmas-decorating at SPCA.

Hanry led the 10-strong group to the homeless shelter to help Jonathan and the team get 18 beds ready for those who needed a place to spend the night out of the cold and off the streets. It's such a worthwhile cause and I'm so glad we can lend a hand to C4WS over the winter when the cold really bites. Every time I speak to Jonathan, he keeps saying how grateful he is that we're doing what we're doing, so thank you everyone.

I took the other half of the group to the Saint Pancras Community Association in the other direction for some light-hearted Christmas decorating fun. We had our work cut out for us - Elaine had left us with boxes of decorations and a few instructions (think a Technical Challenge on Bake Off!) so we had a fair bit of creative freedom with it. The group split again into Team Downstairs and Team Upstairs and everyone got cracking on hanging paperchains, decorating the two Christmas trees, putting out the bunting and sticking snowflakes to the doors and windows.

There were a few Italian fiesta coloured banners which I think we styled out nicely and George did some great work tinseling up the bannisters. The photos tell the story better than I ever could.

After a quick team photo next to one of the Christmas trees, it was time to head back for a cool down stretch and then PIZZA!

It was so great to have so many of you out with us, eating pizza at Happy Face last night and I just wanted to say thank you very, very much for a lovely card and hilarious Christmas outfit. Special thanks to Rosie (and Helen from Scope) from being the organisers of this unexpected treat - the card is sitting on my desk as I'm writing this, I love it!

Thanks for being so welcoming over the last few months and I hope you're looking forward to what 2020 will bring as much as I am. If I don't see you next week, MERRY CHRISTMAS and I hope you enjoy some well-deserved time off with friends and family.

NEXT TIME

COMMUNITY MISSION: If you're free this evening (Thursday) from 6pm and would like to sing your heart out for a good cause, then join our very own Beth and some others from GoodGym Wandsworth for some good old-fashioned carolling at Kambala Cares in SW11 2LE.

OUR LAST RUN OF 2019: Next Wednesday's session is our last group run of the year and we're going to be sticking together to go down to C4WS as a one big team before we say goodbye ahead of the Christmas break. Festive wear is as close to compulsary as possible and there may well be fitness penalties for those in just regular running clothes - ye be warned!

THE CHRISTMAS BREAK: There will be NO RUNS on Wednesday 25th December or Wednesday 1st of January and our first run back in the New Year will be on the 8th of January 2020.