Rock, stocks and barrow

As the sun shone, 21 runners did good, covering 5km of running, helping at Beecroft Garden Primary School and running up and down hills!

I can barely contain myself today, every time I looked at Strava over the weekend someone had either been on a run, or carried out a good deed! Here's a round-up of all the news:

• Jacqueline and Clare were at Endure 24, outside Reading, running round and round for 24 hours, amazing work (and in the pouring rain at some points too!).

• Kim and Tom ran a HUGE training run (around 30k, with Hilly Fields parkrun as a starter)!

• Sarah got herself a parkrun PB with the help of Louise's motivational support.

• Helen and Kim ran their 50th parkrun!

• Caireen and Ian were over at the Grove Park Nature Reserve, helping to clear an area for some bees (it looked really beautiful).

• A group of us did a litter-pick before Hilly Fields parkrun, a now regular community mission.

We have a few more opportunities to get involved outside our group runs:

• Helping at the Hilly Fields Midsummer Fayre (various roles at different points throughout the day).

• Tidying the outdoor space at the Bellingham Children's Centre.

Winners on aggregate!

Mega shout-out to Vic and Marta, who both did a whopping three missions on Saturday, with Marta topping the leaderboard last month with 28 good deeds...28!!

This week we welcomed a brand new runner! Lewisham Love to Matthew. What a great evening to make your debut, as one of our regular runners hit a milestone! Well done to Chloe, who hadn't even realised she was completing her 50th good deed tonight! Many of us will remember Chloe's starring moment, at our birthday run over to Crofton Books, where she helped to compose and then perform a GoodGym poem.

Can I barrow that bucket?

Thank you to Kim - with her tired legs - for leading us at the front this evening and to Marta for back-marking. We met Gemma and Tom at the task and were blown away by how much the space has moved on since our last visit. There are sleepers, the steps are more gravelly, the purple paint has spread further and there is a slide, ready to be fitted. Gemma quickly gave us a run-through of the many jobs on offer. We soon had teams working on:

• shovelling aggregate into barrows and wheeling it to the steps
• raking the aggregate to level it out
• painting the interior of the 'sensory room' a darker shade of blue/purple
• painting the trellis
• digging and picking the slope where the slide will go, finding and removing rocks

That's a lot of work going on in one space!

Blue is the new green

There were the usual challenges, a wheelbarrow with a flat tyre (always, why don't they make puncture-proof wheelbarrows?!), keeping between the lines whilst painting (well done Vic, exemplary work), ascertaining the correct pickaxe technique, and uncovering an ants' nest. Before we left, Gemma told us there will be a couple of chances to help out on a Saturday, this week and then on June 29th - we will list these as community missions, so watch this space!

It would seem churlish to pass by Hilly Fields without at least one little hill run. We totally surpassed this though, with a good, hard FOUR repeats. Great work from everyone, that is possibly the toughest hill in the park!

Next week, we are heading to Crofton Park again, this time to our friends at Crofton Books - hoorah! Sign up here and don't forget to sign up to our Summer Social too, this Thursday at Wildcat Wilderness :)

*Thank you Oli for the puns in this report (the title pun is all my own work this week though - glows with pride - *