Putting Books in a Box, Putting Books in a Cardboard Box

A flash of 19 crimson-clad runners sped through Ladywell and up to Crofton Park, to shift, lift, box, unbox, sort and price books for Crofton Books at Crofton Park Library.

After a slightly slip-slidey sort of warm-up (sorry about the mud, where did that come from?!), we jogged over towards Ladywell, taking in the cemetery in all its spooky night-time glory, arriving at Crofton Park Library, eager and ready to go. Jason let us in and told us all about the library and bookshop, then showed us the various areas that needed our attention. One group headed into the darkness of the cellar, carrying boxes of books up into the foyer. Another group tackled the end of the library, where they stacked boxes, retrieved boxes of books from on high and generally had a good old tidy up. Others did some box-building and another cluster gathered around the bookshelves and did some sorting and pricing.

There was a great deal of chatter, largely about how much Zadie Smith was worth, what to do with this stack of records and also about our social - well, it is about time, we've been running and doing good in Lewisham for a whole month now! Some suggestions were thrown around, with much 'Mmmmmming' about the possibility of a run ending with nice food and ideas for venues within strolling distance of Glass Mill.

After a quick tidy up and re-stacking of some of the boxes, we said goodbye to Jason and headed as a group over to Hilly Fields. The clue is in the name and we embraced that hill. We did a few lunges, kicks, squats and skips to fire up our glutes and had a think about how amazing hill training is for, well, everything. Seriously! A few options were offered up, with more than half of the runners taking the whole hill option by the horns and the rest gritting their teeth and storming up the half-hill option. What a determined bunch! These hills were repeated, with variations on a theme to engage our arms and to think about the downhill and that lovely feeling that comes when you let gravity do its thing. We don't like doing things by half at GoodGym Lewisham, so we ran up the hill one more time, with the promise of 'downhill all the way' once we'd admired the incredible view and got our breath back.

A sprint finish took us back to the bright (and colourfully flashing) lights of Glass Mill, where we worked through a series of stretches and chatted some more. Much love was given to both Jacqueline and Aggie (hi Aggie!) on their first Coach Runs, we're really excited that we now have runners paired with isolated older people in our borough.

Superb running everyone, you totally owned that hill!