Grime artists

Running into a lighter evening (yay!) ten GoodGymmers covered 5.5km and helped clean the shutters at Leaf and Groove.

Thank you Stuart for tonight's smashing title pun, I do like it when he gets his thinking hat on!

We're a bit excited by the clock change, well I am anyway, I love this time of year! This means we can run most of our session in the daylight and can spend more time outdoors and enjoying our lovely local parks. Talking of people enjoying a local park, well done to Bradley, who managed to cross the finish at Beckenham Place parkrun in first position on Saturday, in a breathtaking time of 16:45, yes, you're eyes are not deceiving you, isn't that outstanding?! He only started running a year ago and has worked really hard to reach this point, so give him a big cheer.

• This week is the monthly GoodGym social which, this time, is in central London, at The Court on Tottenham Court Road. It's a great opportunity to meet runners from other areas, enjoy hearing all the news, have a drink and vote for the International Pun of the Month (which surely we must be in the running for this month?!). Sign up here.

• Ian mentioned a nice local race that's happening in a couple of months, a good goal to train towards. The Bromley Midsummer 10k is run around Norman Park, is a small field and local enough to see familiar faces. Sign up!

This week's task was a brand new venue for us, so exciting times as we headed into the park for our warm-up (which got quite competitive!). Thank you to Louise and Stuart for leading the group up front and to Ian for back-marking, what a fantastic team of runners we have.

Our run was undulating, so everyone was definitely nice and warm when we arrived in Forest Hill, where it started to rain (then hail, heavily!). We were met at Leaf and Groove by Simon, who had buckets of water, scrubbing brushes and cloths. We heard how the shop, selling second hand books and music (hence the wonderful name) helps to provide an income for the Forest Hill Library, across the road. Our job this week was to scrub down the shutters, ready for an artist to come in and paint them with a lovely new mural.

Get into the groove

As this is a busy bus route, the shutters were truly grimy and, sadly, had been graffitied recently. Our top team got stuck right in, scrubbing, Brillo-ing and splashing. This was a great spot for a chat with passing commuters, who seemed fascinated by what we were doing! Soon enough, the clock had struck eight and it was time to go. We look forward to seeing what happens next at the space and hope to return soon to help some more.

On our return to Crystal Palace Park, we took advantage of the last bit of light and a nearby hill, with a few good, strong hill repeats. I could see clearly how much people have been listening in previous weeks, as I watched arms driving hard and knees lifting - excellent! A very big thank you to Louise for leading the stretches tonight, nicely done! I won't be here next week, as I'm off on a family trip, but Kim will be taking the lead. Sign up, come along and show Kim how we do things in Penge! I'll see you the following week, when we will stay behind for a little social afterwards :)