Loo, loo, skip to my loo!

Striding through the darkness, ten tip-top runners headed to Crystal Palace Park to finish painting the toilet block and thrash out a fitness session.

Warning! This run report may cause groaning!

We were joined for the first time this week by Kellie, who was already in her lovely red t-shirt! Welcome Kellie, we hope we made you feel welcome (give Kellie a cheer and make her feel even more at home). We also had a visitor from over the border (gasp) in Lewisham, hey Nykolette, nice to see you this side of the tracks (and I just realised this was Nykolette's 25th GoodGym good deed, that's pretty special)!

We talked a little about the GoodGym Race Team while we waited for everyone to arrive, this is a UK Athletics affiliated running club, that allows you reduced entry into races and offers HUGE support at the Big Six races throughout the year.

After a really successful start to our task last week, we were heading back up to Crystal Palace Park and the little toilet block, to finish painting and generally giving the loos a makeover - we're no flash in the pan! Here, we met Penny, who distributed equipment and those all-important (and much-coveted?) blue overalls - we even had a higher uptake of goggles this week, to complete the look. On entering the gent's loo, there were a few wrinkled noses and cries of 'ewwwwww!' as we surveyed the task ahead. Yes, there was a great big urinal dominating the space, so cue lots of volunteers claiming the further reaches of the building!

Pantastic Penge!

Rollers, brushes and trays were quickly gathered up and the job was in full swing, with graffiti being eradicated, grubby patches being whitewashed out and a posse of spiders being gradually edged out of the space. Again, teamwork was in force here, with people footing the ladder, sharing equipment and pointing out 'missed bits'. I was very impressed with not just the transformation, but with how quickly everyone got over any initial squeamishness to complete a task which will make a big difference to many park users.

Once the walls and ceiling were finished, we had enough time to start on cleaning the equipment, before locating our pool of light in the park. Time for our fitness session, just a short run this week, having realised last week that the park paths are just too dark to venture too far in! This doesn't mean we didn't get a little out of breath and flushed! A quick warm up revealed our true personalities as we fought it out for the cone, I wouldn't have had Rachael down as a kicker! I might just have driven people around the bend slightly here, trying to explain our partner circuits session (it was simple really, once everyone got going). Praise goes in particular tonight to Jon, who displayed some impressive support, with his motivational 'Great worming!' (inchworms, we were doing inchworms). After a few rounds of this it was time for some focussed running, with some dynamic drills to warm up our run-specific muscles and really strong form from everyone as they ran hard up the long hill. I hope you weren't feeling too pooped after our #planktober!

Next week is going to be a brand new task, over at Living Well, where we will have the chance to sort though all the Harvest donations to the food bank and help to organise them within the storage space. Why not sign up and join in?