I underwear these go...

In a rush of GoodGym red, 33 runners covered 5+km and sorted through a mountain of clothing at GRACE.

It might not have been our birthday this week, but we still had plenty to celebrate. With it being the end of the month, we took the opportunity to honour our Heroes of January. This month's high(er) achievers were:

• Most good deeds: Stephen, with 11, closely followed by Emma, with 9
• Greatest distance covered: Sarah, with 214km, closely chased by Malcolm, with 209
• Most cheers given: Conroy, with 1430
• Most cheers received: Stephen, with 375

This is pretty impressive and might have been in part due to our GoodGym-wide January Challenge, which has seen us smash our distance goal, covering a collective 3974km and completing a whopping 201 good deeds (at the time of going to press)! I'm speechless.

Croeso!

We were delighted to welcome two brand new runners this week, Lewisham Love goes to Zoe and Clare, who joined us for the very first time. We also welcomed Birchlyn, who came along to our starter session on Saturday and came back for more. It was lovely, also, to see a few runners returning after succumbing to the lurgy, injury or plain old life. Our first-timers might have been wondering what on earth was going on, with all this talk of cheering and challenges and all the whooping and clapping. Throughout this report you will see names highlighted in red, which means you can click on them to view the runner's page, give them a cheer and check out their badges. Did you know you can also support someone? Click 'support' on their page and they will be added to your team, so you can easily keep track of all their good deeds and activity.

And they're off!

Tonight's warm-up was brought to you in conjunction with my ten-year-old son. He was keen to try and help me devise some new warm-up games and this one was fun and creative at the same time, we hope you enjoyed it :) With Monica and Anita taking the back-marker position, we were all set to run towards Lee. Once at our task, we were met by Claire, who had a mountain of donated clothing for us to sort through. With so many volunteers, the space was tight, but everyone very quickly found a spot and got stuck in. Monika and Emmet were pulling bags out from the pile and passing them along the chain to be sorted. At the other end, items were lifted out, assessed for suitability and put into the various sacks for either men, women or children.

Fancy pants!

It seems to be a tradition that we uncover some 'interesting' underwear on our visits here. So far we've had MASSIVE knickers, frilly knickers and, erm, not-fit-for-use knickers. Tonight was no exception, with Jacqueline finding the oddest bloomer-type things, Rosemary with her boxers and Emma with, would you believe it, dog pants?! Excellent rummaging pant-pickers!

As always, we were heading back out of the door after what felt like five minutes, saying our goodbyes and wishing Claire well with the next journey (our last sort had been packaged up and taken to Syria last week, GRACE are doing amazing work all the time). A brisk jog back along Lee High Road, breathing in all the tasty smells as we went and we were soon back at Glass Mill, with enough time to have a go at our Time Trial. The area of Cornmill Gardens outside our start point is just under 1km if you run around it four times. This Time Trial can be tackled in full or, if you prefer, you can do one, two or three laps. Even after running over 5km, people were keen to have a go, with really strong running all round. You can have a look at the Strava segment here, (if you're into that sort of thing).

As we stretched, we chatted about Simon's 'long' run this coming Sunday, the London Reject Runners London Marathon Run. You can join in for the whole run, or just part of it, finishing off with food and drink. Have a look here to find out more. We also talked new badges and how you can earn yourself a rather nice one by running for one hour between February 1-14th, sharing the GoodGym love. Join the Strava group here. Next week we will be heading out for more of the same, chatting, running and doing good. Sign up and join us.