Wall Together Now!

On a glorious Spring evening, 26 of Lewisham's best ran 2km, scraped, sanded and painted a whole wall and worked together in pairs to build strength and endurance.

Thank you to Steve for this week's title pun (thank you also to Helen, who had a suggestion, but this one seemed so appropriate for this week...I'll save yours!).

What an amazing evening! Just take a look at those photos to see exactly what we're about: getting good stuff done in a short space of time, getting to know each other and supporting our community. Three new runner/volunteers chose a particularly good week to join us for the very first time. Lewisham Love to Matthew, Amanda and Rajesh (though Rajesh was just passing through ahead of a long trip to Australia, so we won't be seeing him for a while!). Welcome back also to Jacqueline and Helen, who are both fine examples of patience and focus, having dealt carefully and determinedly with injury recently - lovely to see you both again, in full working order!

26! That's a lot of names to remember. Don't worry, each week we form a big circle and do a name-check (sometimes we even play a little name game to make sure everyone's listening). After we'd remembered our names, we had a game of Shark Attack then, since we are now the proud owners of a beautiful mural near our start point, we did some dynamic drills all the way to the 'Welcome to Ladywell' sign. I'm sure you'll agree, it's really rather lovely.

Welcome to Ladywell

This week we were running the short(er) distance to Lewisham Library, a brand new task. We were there in no time and were met by Ade, Anne-Marie and another helper (sorry, I didn't catch his name). The plan had been for a company to come in earlier in the day to wash down the wall which, as you can see, is encrusted in pigeon droppings on places and pretty pongy. Unfortunately, this hadn't happened, so we were instructed to give the pigeon zone a wide berth and work on the rest of the wall with vigour and enthusiasm. Masks, buffs, scarves and pulled up t-shirts were employed in the defence against the dark dust and everyone was quickly finding a spot to attack.

We had imagined that this week we would work on the sanding and next week the painting but, very soon, we realised that it might just be possible to get it all done! Thank you Caireen for the nudge to stay a little longer and complete the task, it is amazing to step back and see a job done. Scrapers were swapped for rollers, a couple of brushes were found to quickly sweep up paint flakes and all areas of black, peeling wall were covered with fresh, new 'sandstone'.

Go ahead jump!

Time to gather up all tools and pass them on to Anne-Marie, who very kindly offered to clean them all at home, as we didn't have access to sinks at the library - you star, AM! It was time now for us to run back towards Glass Mill and to engage some other muscles in a game of Scissors/Paper/Stone. This time, there was an element of collaboration and decision making, with the 'winner' deciding whether their pair should run up and down the path or tackle the various stations, each with instructions in planking, mountain climbing, burpeeing (?!), press-ups and squat throws. Cue runners heading in all directions, jumping, pushing, pressing, holding, oh and breathing, if they remembered.

Once everyone was suitably worked and out of breath, we gathered round to stretch and talk about food. Yay! At this point we're always talking about food - running and doing good makes you really hungry! That was OK though, because this week we were heading over to the lovely local Turkish restaurant, Levante for some post-run refuel and rehydration...and to celebrate my 100th GoodGym good deed. I did wonder why a few of our regulars were rushing off ahead of us, imagining they must be so hungry they couldn't wait. It turns out they were meeting Sean and Steve at the restaurant, blowing up red balloons and taking care of a very special cake, baked by Kim. Thank you so much everyone, you made what was already a fantastic evening even more heartening!

As we ate and chatted, there was a great deal of buzz around the upcoming GoodGym Olympics. Yes, the chance for each borough to compete against each other in a series of events at the Parliament Hill track. We are going to field a very strong team, so if you want to get involved, please let us know (the events range from actual running to egg-and-spoon and welly wanging...). Each area will also make a flag to represent their borough. Of course, we will be going to great lengths to ensure ours reflects all that Lewisham has to offer. Join in!