Christmas is cucumbing!

In back to school spirit, we welcomed lots of new faces to GoodGym Lewisham this evening - Holly, Sarah and Sebastien it was lovely to have you all join us! After a bumper load of news celebrating our August heroes and lots of weekend mission running, I was nearly out of breath before we even started the warm up!

With a long run ahead of us this evening, we did a few dynamic warm up moves whilst moving in a circle (from where I stood everyone looked wonderfully graceful!) before heading off up and over those hills between Glass Mill and Seniors. All good long runs feature a support crew, and it was a fun surprise to run past Adele cheering us on from her front garden - hi Adele!

On arrival at Seniors, we were very pleased too to see Sarah (who is edging tantalisingly close to that coveted black tshirt!). Cathy had a choice of tasks lined up for us, either down in the cellar or out in the garden. On such a lovely evening, the thought of Christmas decorations and cellars didn't seem particularly appealing, but Clare, Sarah, Louise and Arran got into the sorting spirit, whilst Adam and Ian (who we welcomed from Croydon this evening!) donned some serious-looking safety gear to clear rubble out of a forgotten crawl space.

Meanwhile, above ground and out in the garden, Norma had put the rest of this evening's runners to task, with some weeding and digging over of soil. As all intrepid GoodGymers do, the digging team were cracking on with gusto, without necessarily knowing quite what all their hard effort was for! It perhaps didn't matter to Oliver, who proclaimed that digging and weeding were his two favourite GoodGym pasttimes anyway (the tasks that keep on giving), but it turns out that there were a load of new plants lined up ready for planting once the soil had been turned, to rejuvenate a forgotten corner of the garden in time for Seniors' next open day in October. I had it easy in comparison, with Norma taking me on a tour of the polytunnel, including a freshly picked cucumber to take home!

Thank goodness I had a bag with me, or it would have proven to be a rather cucumbersome gift!

We took in the sights at the top of Blythe Hill Fields on our way back to Glass Mill, with London looking particularly spectacular in this evening's colourful sunset. I offered Norma's cucumber as a prize to the person with the best 10th birthday photo idea, but most of the suggestions were too risky for my liking (human pyramids and climbing on bins were both ruled out!) so I kept the cucumber to myself and we settled with a line of 10's held proudly aloft in front of one of South-East London's classic views. Thanks to both Clare and Sarah for backmarking this evening.

As Cathy was excitedly telling us, GoodGym is celebrating its 10th birthday this September, with a party at City Hall no less! Get your ticket here to celebrate with other GoodGym members, trainers, runners, partners and friends. And don't forgot the monthly GoodGym social which is this Thursday and open to all.

See you soon and happy running!