Muffin's gonna stop us now!

On a very special evening, eight awesome athletes took to the local park, to clear brambles, weeds and rubbish, rounding off with a celebratory picnic.

One year?! How can it be?! GoodGym Bromley started back in April 2017 in Bromley central, but we have been running from our start point in Penge since July last year, an anniversary well worth celebrating! In the year or so that our group have been together, we have totted up some pretty impressive totals.

• Good deeds: 340

• Group runs: 66

• Coach visits: 31

• Km run: 4350

• Organisations helped (approx): 20

That's an awful lot of very positive acts, to make a difference in our local community and a lot of hours spent getting to know each other better en route. A shout-out to those in attendance tonight, Stuart (who was there at the start!), Hannah, Louise, Jane, Clare, Rachael and Bradley. A shout-out also to Louise, who was unable to join us, but completed her 50th good deed the other day, whilst on a coach visit! Well done Louise, only our second runner to reach this milestone!

As we were in the party mood and laden down with treats for our post-run picnic, it was a leisurely saunter up to Crystal Palace Park for us tonight, where we stored our supplies in exchange for some loppers, shears, litter-pickers and gloves. Penny showed us where our attention was to be focused this week and thanked us for returning here one year on. Grabbing whichever tool took our fancy, we quickly found a role to embrace, with a few people cutting back brambles, bindweed and nettles and others picking litter...a task that can become truly engrossing (I find), especially when people have been releasing party poppers onto the grass...

Clare and Stuart worked hard in the entrance to the Secret Garden, making sure the area was passable and safe. We all commented on how early the blackberries were and took advantage of their ripeness to have a mid-task treat. Bag in hand, Jane did some blackberrying, with the help of Stuart and his handy extendable snipping tool, teamwork. As always, we were so engaged in our individual jobs that we failed to notice time passing quickly and were soon heading back to the container, to pack up before our fitness session (yes, a fitness session - some thought we were cutting straight to the picnic!).

Plank you very much

A few old favourites to warm us up, some knee-tag and a very competitive game of cones. This was followed by a 1km chain gang run, with sprinters catching up from behind, a good exercise in pacing. Continuing this relay theme, we revisited a popular (mwah-ha-ha-ha!) plank game, where everyone showed great determination.

How lucky we are to have our 'Pengiversary' in July and to have such a wonderful space to enjoy our celebrations! Thank you to everyone for entering into this in true GoodGym spirit, bringing, sharing and joining in. There were some lovely treats and a bit of birthday fun with candles, singing and all :) We talked a bit about our favourite tasks, with the food bank at Living Well being popular (with the run on January 2nd being particularly memorable, in freezing rain!), I have fond memories of the time we all turned out in the snow and ice and, as it was too dangerous to run, walked together, chatting all the way. It seems adverse weather is popular!

On Saturday and Sunday this week we have an additional opportunity to do good, with a community mission to the Upper Norwood Library Hub, to try and progress the development of the shed. Why not sign up?! Next Tuesday I will be away, so the group run will be led by Paul, the trainer for GoodGym Camden and Islington. Have fun and make Paul feel very welcome!

Thank you all for a wonderful year and here's to many more fantastic group runs together!