Roll out the barrow, wheel have a barrow of fun!

On a unseasonably mild February evening, 22 runners covered between 5 and 6k to help out at Beecroft Garden Primary School

This week, as we head into March (Happy Saint David's Day for Friday!), we are celebrating our Heroes of February. It has been another incredible month of goodness, support, activity, sharing and giving. Check out these stats!

• Distance covered: Vic with 303km (at time of going to press!)
• Cheers given: Sarah with 607 (I haven't counted myself, but seriously, I don't know where I find the time to do anything else with all the cheering I do, I can't get enough of it!)
• Cheers received: Nykolette with 309
• Good deeds: Nykolette with a whopping 9! This might explain all her - well deserved - cheers.

Great work everyone.

A very big welcome and all our Lewisham Love go this week to Ruth, who joined us for the very first time and also to Ian G, who was joining us for the first time in a long time (he has been coach running, just unable to make our group runs!). Lovely to see you both!

This week our run was taking us on a 5k round-trip, over to our good friends at Beecroft Garden Primary School. First of all we did need to warm up though, with a variation on a theme, giving us the chance to take our knee-tagging a bit further. A very big thank you to Marta for back-marking this evening, keeping us together all the way to Crofton Park.

We were met at the task by Gemma, who quickly told everyone about the different jobs:

• Digging away some more bricks/rocks/soil to make space for another step
• Transferring soil into wheelbarrows to be run over to the skip
• Getting in the skip to take receipt of the barrows
• Weeding the big raised bed at the front
• Helping to bring some bags of compost from the car, to be spread beyond the newly-installed fence at the front

There was very quickly an air of urgency around the space, with wheelbarrows being pushed to and fro, spades digging deep to shift the soil (this space was pretty much cleared by the end of the evening!), pickaxes swinging, weeds being pulled, compost being spread and ramps being run up. Gemma referred to tonight's jobs as a 'hotch-potch' and she was right, but it's amazing to see how everyone pulls together to complete each of the different jobs, working as a team and working towards a common goal.

We were soon gathering for our group photo (after some rather lovely treats from Gemma - thank you) and taking the downward run back to our start point and the Monthlyish Time Trial (which was met with such enthusiasm when I mentioned it in my briefing...). For those of you who don't know, we have a little (almost) 1k lap outside our start point - four laps of Cornmill Gardens - which we aim to tackle once a month. Lots of our runners decided to give it a go tonight, with Oli and Ian going head-to-head at the front, pulling each other along, their competitive spirit kicking in as they neared the finishing line (it's a great spectator sport!). If you're into Strava stats and segments, you can check out the segment for this TT here and see where people are on the leaderboard.

On Sunday at 10.30am, we have another chance to visit Beecroft Garden, to do some work in the daylight, alongside families from the school. Sign up here to get involved. Next Monday we will be heading to Wildcat Wilderness, our first visit of 2019. It will be dark, so please bring a head-torch if you have one. It's a slightly longer run, of around 7km, with a great physical task in the middle. Sign up here to join in.

Don't forget!

It's that time of year again, where we get all competitive against our fellow GoodGym members, at the GoodGym Olympic Games! There are races for those with a more serious approach, but also events for people who want to show off their sack-racing skills or even baking prowess! Sign up here and find out more about what's involved (basically a lot of fun with friends in the sunshine).

See you soon!