Herb Your Enthusiasm

Embracing this Indian summer, 25 top athletes ran 6km, took on numerous tasks at Chelwood Nursery and ran hard at Hilly Fields.

Tom came up with the title-pun goods again this week, very nice.

We will be continuing with the bug spray and short sleeves for a while, if these balmy temperatures continue! How lovely to run in the glowing evening sun, holding on to those last moments of summer. Sigh. It was a weekend of successes all round, with Clare and Sarah running the Richmond Half-Marathon, Kim smashing yet another 'longest run ever' and lots of our runners representing at the Marsha Phoenix 10k Relay up at Hilly Fields. Not only did we have lots of great teamwork all round, but we even had a winning team! Well done to Oli, Tom, Bradley (and another Oli, from parkrun), who won themselves the treat of a voucher for The Orchard in Brockley!

It was an exciting week for new faces and visitors, with all our Lewisham Love going to Emily, Kirsten and Eliza, who joined us for their first ever GoodGym group run. A big welcome too, to Louise, all the way from GoodGym Bromley, on her first bit of tourism (I always enjoy seeing one of my Tuesday lovelies in Lewisham :) ).

We warmed up with a bit of a lucky dip of moves, with people taking it in turns to shout out what to do. We also had the cutest little ones joining in with some arm swings - our warm-ups do attract a lot of attention in a busy Cornmill Gardens! With a top team of Nykolette and Kim keeping us together at the back, we ran a slightly different route, along Adelaide Avenue (be happy I spared you the more direct route of Ellerdale Street), picking Vic up along the way. Taking a slightly, ahem, circuitous route to Chelwood Nursery School, we were met by Nikki, who quickly told us all about this amazing space (it made me want to be three again...!).

We could sense the light fading already, so everybody quickly found a tool and a task and got on with it, with lots of laughing and chatting to be heard all round (sorry to the people in the flats overlooking the gardens!). We had a number of things going on:

• Pulling up weeds from between the slabs

• Clearing away sad-looking plants that hadn't survived the summer

• Digging over a bed for planting

• Weeding planters and pots

• Sweeping up stray sand

• Wheeling away cuttings and weeds

• Finding treasure

What's that?! Treasure, you say?! Yes, treasure. We love finding treasure at our tasks, with Jacqueline being our usual chief finder. This evening it was Kim's turn, with a lovely little dinosaur. I had some fun with a big pink camera and a little terrapin too (I told you it all made me want to be three again). Pretty soon we found ourselves in darkness, with small clusters of people crouched over the light of a head-torch. Time to pack away and enjoy a quick Twix before we went (thanks for the treats Nikki!). I'm sure we will be back soon to do some more good work here.

As we were in the area, it seemed only right that we should enjoy a hill or two at Hilly Fields (sorry to those of you who did the relay race yesterday!). In pairs, we jogged steadily to one tree, then pushed HARD to the top. It was a great effort from everyone and I could see you were thinking about your form, driving those arms and picking up your knees.

As we stretched, we talked about all the upcoming events, I think it calls for another list:

• On Saturday we are invited to Luxmore Gardens for their Summer Garden Party, from 12-4pm

• It's the Urban Harvest at Wildcat Wilderness from 11am

• On Sunday we are invited to celebrate the 1100th birthday of St Mary's Church, from 12pm in the Therapeutic Garden

If you have any energy left after all that, we're heading to Seniors next Monday evening for our group run. This will be a run of around 7km, for a variety of indoor and outdoor tasks. Sign up here.