Lit(t)erally, blown away by Maria's major milestone

We came into this last group run of January knowing that we needed 12 more good deeds to reach our our January Challenge! Sam was keeping his fingers crossed for at least 12 Southwark members. With 21 sign ups, it was looking hopeful. Slowly, but surely, people started to stream into Old Spike. By 18:45, he looked up at everyone and gave a silent count. 14 faces, but 11 Southwark members... but just as he was about to start his speech, David entered the door. We did it, 200 good deeds in January! Hit both targets having already hit our distance target of 2,000km.

There was a lot to get through tonight, but we started by welcoming Chalomi and Jack from Central Team as well as David and Roberta who came for their second GoodGym session. Yet, tonight was special as not only we were celebrating hitting our targets and GG Southwark's 8th birthday, but Maria after four months and a half from her first good deed hit her 100th! Claiming her wings (and a cake) in the process. Kudos and well done Maria!

Sam went through his usual GG intro speech and his ice-breaker snap-poll and question tonight was about National Croissant Day and National Hot Chocolate Day, which fell on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. He asked which one is more preferable: croissant or hot chocolate? He also asked, if anyone wanted to share about their January highlights.

For the snap poll and winning by one vote....croissant! People's January highlights included going on holiday, birthdays, raves and learning new skills.

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"Is Stormzy from Southwark?"

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group out of Old Spike with Maria backmarked (both ways). The idea was to do a loop around Peckham Rye Park but speedy Sam realised parts of the group were behind, so he decided to change it up last minute and do an "out and back" course. It was a busy night in the park with other runners and Peckham Pacers. Yet, after our just under 4k run, we made it back to Old Spike to take a breather and a sip of Athletic Brewing IPAs.

With litter pickers and black bin bags at the ready, we had to split the group into four teams to cover 4 different areas:

• Team Laura who had Alex, Isaac, Louise and Steve covered East Dulwich.
• Team Katy who had just Daryl covered Nunhead.
• Team Paulin who had Andrada, Folarin, Maria, Nathan covered Peckham.
• Team Emma who had Chalomi, David, Lucy, Jack and Roberta covered Queen's Road Peckham.

The rules were simple. Tick off as many items on the litter bingo card in 30 minutes and cover as much distance as the winning team would be determined by items x by distance (in kilometres) = points.

After 30 minutes, each team came back with two bags worth of litter and ticked off their items (out of 25). The results were as following:

• 4th place: Team Peckham = 22 items x 1.75km (38.5 points)
• 3rd place: Team Nunhead = 21 items x 2.75km (57.75 points)
• 2nd place: Team East Dulwich = 23 items x 2.95k (67.85 points)
• 1st place: Team Queen's Road Peckham = 23 items x 3km (69 points)

The winning team took home small body gels from Body Shop. There were awards for those in Southwark that did more than 5 good deeds and covered more than 25 kilometres plus we had cake to celebrate GG Southwark's 8th birthday and Maria's 100th good deed milestone before most of us headed to The Old Nun's Head for a few drinks and pizza!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! I did go off on a faster pace than usual as I was conscious of time. It was a long run, but we managed to squeeze in the 4k run and a litter pick after my longer than usual speech and ice-breaker. Thank you to Maria for backmarking, Paulin, Emma, Katy and Laura for being sub-team leaders for the litter pick bingo. Finally, thank you to all for coming to these group runs in January, we managed to reach our targets!