By the GRACE of GoodGym our Spring collection will be ready

Sharing the love between two tasks, 31 runners took to the streets of Lewisham to cover between 5 and 5.5km.

Thank you this week to Conroy and the GRACE team for our lovely title pun

The foyer at Glass Mill was awash with red t-shirts this evening and we were pleased to welcome some new faces. Hello and Lewisham Love to Oli, Kanatta, Caitlin and Julia (who were here to interview us for their university radio piece, we look forward to hearing the - slightly breathless - results!). How lovely also to welcome back Andy, who returned after having run the London Marathon recently.

Another great weekend of running and racing! We had:

• Juliet at the Bewl Water Half-Marathon (that will have been a toughie!)
• Bradley at the Greenwich Park 10k

and a whole host of lovelies over in Bucharest with the GoodGym Race Team, running a hot half-marathon, well done to:

• Nykolette
• Amber
• Emma (who even managed a PB!)
• Stephen

There were 100+ runners representing GoodGym in Bucharest, running, cheering and celebrating, isn't that marvellous?!

If you like your racing short but very sweet, we have the now annual GoodGym Olympic Games coming up on Saturday June 30th, at the Parliament Hill track. You will be able to take your pick from events such as the egg and spoon, sack race, GoodGym relay (and some more 'serious' track running events, such as 400, 800, 1500m and so on). To join in you need to sign up here and also let Conroy know, so he can keep track and make sure we have all of the events covered. Last year's event was top notch fun and having you there will make it even better!

To the tasks!

Yes tasks, plural. This week we were off to Hither Green to help the Scouts with some painting at the Ted Ray Hall and a little bit further towards Lee, to help GRACE in their shop. A big thank you to Conroy for leading the group over to GRACE. On our way to the Scout Hall, we chatted about the Great Hilly Fields parkrun Diversion of 2018, where a whole load of runners accidentally went the wrong way on Saturday. Oh how we chuckled, then promptly lost our back-marker group. Well done back-markers Jacqueline and Sarah for finding your way to the hall and well done also on running that little bit further (sorry!).

We were met at the task by Janet, who quickly showed everyone in and, in true Scout style, was well and truly prepared, with sheets of plastic laid on the floor, brushes and paint ready to go and refreshments for our thirsty runners. The wall that needed our attention was currently a shade of render grey, but before long the white paint was going on and the chatter was getting louder. As you can see from the photos, we could only reach so far, so out came a few ladders and those who wanted to, tried to get a little more covered. Stepping back to survey the work, we all enjoyed a Nice biscuit (prompting the big 'Nice' or 'Nice' debate. Answers on a postcard please). It seemed rude to leave the top part of the wall unfinished, so we have decided to spare a few runners next week, since we will be just along the road at the Springbank Community Garden. Giving ourselves a big round of applause, off we headed, keeping a very close eye on our back-marking team.

Meanwhile, over in Leegate...

Let’s be Brief Our friends over at GRACE have been busy packing clothes for their next mission abroad, so they haven’t had time to hanger around their shop to get it ready with their spring collection. Ten GoodGymers pulled their socks up and ran over to help, lucky for them there was no skirting around as we got stuck in. Not only were we able to sort and hang the spring collection in the shop, but we were also able to move their fridge to their new kitchen. Not sure how many of you have seen the man running the marathon with a fridge or washing machine strapped to his back, but you had to be there tonight to witness Tom climbing the stairs with a 5ft fridge freezer on his back. Unfortunately there is no photographic evidence as I couldn’t get him to freezer for the moment. Not to worry, he had support from three others and was able to run home. As always, we were thanked for the amount of work we did in a shorts space of time.

Awesome pun action there team!

On our return to Glass Mill, we found the GRACE team waiting for us, trying very unconvincingly to tell us that they had already done the 1km time trial and a number of squats (they looked remarkably fresh...). As we didn't believe a word that they said, we embarked on a bit of GG Olympic Games practice, with a rather daft four-person-velcro relay. As we didn't have the velcro to hand, we just put our hands on each other's shoulders and trotted along like dressage ponies. What fun!

Next week we will be heading to Hither Green again (it is the HG Festival at the moment, with lots of great events taking place), to tend to the Springbank Community Garden (and to complete the painting for the Scouts). Sign up here to join in, it'll be a lot of fun.