Hey! Ho! And up the hill she rises!

Everything in Lewisham was ship-shape and Bristol fashion for this week's group run. An enthusiastic eighteen runners covered between 3 and 4km, tackling hill repeats, high intensity intervals and delivering flyers to tell the people of Lewisham about the Ahoy Centre and all in an effort to build up a hearty appetite for our social afterwards.

This week we took a slightly different turn, with our task at Roseview sheltered housing having to be postponed to a later date. As we caught up in the foyer of Glass Mill, a steady stream of familiar faces wandered in to join us. It was great to see some of our runners returning after a summer of adventure and lovely to welcome first-timer Laura, who has been planning on joining us for a while - excellent to have you with us at last Laura! As I had been away last week, I heard about the excellent task over at Crofton Books, heaving bookshelves to one side to make way for the shiny new flooring - well done to those of you who joined in, it sounded challenging!

Time to get warm! The grassy area of Cornmill Gardens is still busy with evening activities (though slightly less grassy and more straw-y at the moment). We negotiated some space by forming a (great big) circle to reacquaint ourselves with possibly forgotten names, then a quick game of shin-tag before we lined up for some drills to address our form, before running up hill. We concentrated on lifting our knees, picking up those feet, driving our arms and running high in our hips...encouraging a graceful, floating action. Really!

With handfuls of flyers for Ahoy! (check out what they do here, it's an amazing charity and just a short run from our start point), we made our way out towards Ellerdale Street, with pairs branching off along side streets, watching out for 'over-friendly' dogs and 'No Junk Mail!' notices as they went. We were soon spread out over Brockley, Ladywell and Lewisham, jogging, skipping and dipping in and out of gates and squatting and lunging to pop the flyers through hungry letterboxes.

Avast!

We were due to meet and regroup at the top of the hill, at the entrance to Hilly Fields and, gradually, a little cluster of red t-shirts formed, though a quick head-count revealed there were still a few (wo)men overboard. Some extra squats, a loop of the park and a brisk hill repeat by me and we had gathered in our catch, ready to proceed with our main fitness session. Good flyering everyone!

It was a humid evening and, although we were warm, we needed to be really warm to tackle hill repeats. The basketball court (and a few handy tree trunks) provided the perfect space for some dynamic leg swings, openers, kicks and pendulum swings to really fire up our glutes and open up our hips, ready to run. The hill we tackled is a steep one, but those who have encountered it previously were delighted that we were only attacking one section. Phew! As a group, the goal was to run hard and, once the first person reached the top, turn and run back down, making note of where you had reached. The goal on the next repeat was to go beyond that point, pushing ever harder. Shouts of encouragement could be heard, though I have a feeling these were to get someone to the top so that the downhill could be embraced! Downhill was considered here too, none of this lolloping down, with total disregard for form, we attempted to feel gravity pulling us, picking up our feet and enjoying the downhill as much as the up...:)

One last upwards push and we jogged over to the Hiit Zone. I reassured everyone that we have, in fact, done this loads of times, but giving high intensity intervals their proper name seemed to make them into this mysterious form of core-based torture. We were very soon charging head-long into a few rounds of lunges with side turns, planks, mountain-climbers (ah, that's what they're called!) and, thanks to Jacqueline challenging me to the 22 press-ups a day thingie, press-ups. This wasn't a race, this was all about executing each exercise well, favouring three really good press-ups over thirty elbow-dipping failures. As the light starts to creep in around us, we really want to make the most of these last few weeks of enjoying the park at night, so ran a little loop to take us out and down to our start point.

Aaaaahnd stretch and relax!

This week had been a shorter run, but it was an intense one, so time to ease out any tightness. We stretched quads, calf muscles, glutes, lower backs, hamstrings, lats and finished with a nice gentle neck and shoulder stretch. This week was my fiftieth good deed - did you know you earn yourself not just a new badge at this milestone, but also a lovely black GoodGym t-shirt? I look forward to wearing mine with pride and working towards that extra special 100 tee...with wings! What better way to celebrate good deeds than with a good chat and some good food with friends, so a short stroll to the recently reopened Brookmill, along one of our regular routes and we all rehydrated and refuelled in the lovely hidden garden.

See you all next week for some more of the same!