All white on the night

Fending off the icy wind, eleven runners tackled 5+km and painted vast swathes of Melvin Hall.

Once again we have Stuart to thank for this week's dazzling title pun, he's on fire!

Before we got stuck in this week, we celebrated the achievement of one of our runners. Clare often runs with GoodGym Lewisham, as well as here in Bromley and joined in the Run up to Christmas, as part of the Lewisham team. As a group, they covered just under 1300km between the first and twenty-fifth of December and Clare herself covered an impressive 68.3km! It was my job, as team captain, to hand out the beautiful medals :) Well done Clare.

Joining us this week for the first time, was Anthony, who has previously run with GoodGym in Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth. Welcome Anthony!

Here in Bromley we have a great start point, it's a pub (and theatre), what's not to like?! We do have limited space though for a warm up and, as our group grows, the little patch of pavement outside is looking less and less possible (sorry pedestrians!). We must put our thinking hats on and get creative! This week we were returning to nearby Melvin Hall, to continue our Forth Bridge scale painting challenge. Over Christmas, the volunteers who run Melvin Hall were incredibly busy, with many social events, including a Christmas lunch for those who might otherwise have been on their own over the festive season (this was also supported by our start point, the Bridge House). I'm sure you'll agree, this is a rather special community resource.

After a brief bounce around outside, while I tried to get hold of Kathy, we were in and raring to go! During our previous visits, we have worked hard painting over the peach in one of the halls, there was still a little area left here, which Ian valiantly took on. We were also expanding our painting horizons this time, with Hannah and Jane tackling a toilet, Anthony and Tony covering some more peach in an adjacent office and Stuart, Louise, Rachael, Molly and Clare working their way along a corridor and stairs. All around was a buzz of activity, with motivational tunes playing (Final Countdown anyone?!) and rollers rolling. As always with painting tasks, time was up pretty quickly, as we also needed to wash our brushes and rollers and leave the space nice and tidy, great work from everyone here.

Last week I noticed how much our group enjoyed the longer run, many of our tasks have so far been quite close by, so it felt good to stretch our legs and push a little harder on the run. I decided this week that we would try and extend our post-task run, with the aim of reaching 5k. With Ian taking the roll of back-marker and being super encouraging and supportive - thank you Ian - we headed away from our start point and out towards Cator Park (which was in complete darkness, oh for those lighter summer evenings...). Every so often we would regroup, occasionally looping back to try and stay together. As we neared the Bridge House, I released those who wanted to for a little sprint, with a few runners darting away like race horses! In total we actually hit 5.5km, so all those loops were worth the effort!

I'm sure he won't mind me saying, but Tony celebrated a really special birthday before Christmas, reaching the big 7-0! He showed us photos of he and his wife enjoying a birthday lunch and also showed off his new Fitbit. I'm pretty sure the stats were looking good after this week's run Tony, happy birthday!

Next week we might be returning to Melvin Hall, to be confirmed, but sign up anyway and join us for an uplifting run, chat, fitness session and task.