Wow, what an evening!

Firstly, a very warm welcome to our new runners Romona, Taz and Zac - go and give them all a cheer! And also worth a huge cheer is Vic's fantastic achievement of a 24 month streak of group runs! That's two whole years of running and doing good, what a wonderful woman!

After a rather dog-eat-dog (or rather, runners-watch-dog) warm-up, we soon set off towards Lee, stopping at pretty much every set of traffic lights along the way. Thanks to the lovely Jacqueline, Clare and Oli for helping to keep such a big group together and safe along the busy route to Lee.

As always, there was plenty to do at Big Red Box HQ. There was a huge new donation to sort, many bags of which had been collected by our friends at Hilly Fields parkrun over the weekend. The packing station needed to be replenished, boxes had to be assembled, and pallets lined up ready for the 5 minute challenge.

You gotta be tin it to win it

We got not one, but two attempts at the hotly anticipated 5-minute challenge. For the uninitiated, this is one of the most glorious human chain experiences you could ever hope to be a part of, with each empty box making its way from one end of the corridor to the other, being packed full of one of each type of food, before being closed up with a lid, and stashed on a pallet ready to be sent out for distribution.

(Pal)Let battle commence!

After a fantastic first attempt where 35 of us managed to pack 36 boxes in just 5 minutes, a 2019 record. We restocked our food stations, assembled a few more boxes ready for round two. Nicely warmed up, and either enthused or intimidated by my constant shouts of "pack smart" and "tesselate harder", we managed a whopping 52 boxes in our second round! A Big Red Box all-time record! If you add in the extra boxes we finished filling after the countdown was over, that's well over 100 boxes in less than an hour. Just think what a difference that will make to so many people in our community over this festive period.

Official heavyweight boxing champions

There's plenty more festive fun to be had in the next few days, including putting up decorations at St Christopher's Hospice with our friends over in Bromley tomorrow night (nice to see you Ian!), the GG x Xmas Xtravaganza! where you can meet GoodGym runners from far and wide, distributing Christmas trees for Kings who we were supporting this evening, and a trip to Crofton Books next week where no doubt the Christmas tunes will be out in force.

Thanks to Marta for this week's run report title, and to Oli for the smattering of puns (as always!).

A very warm welcome to our new runners this evening - go and give Kabba and Magda a cheer - what heroes you are for making it out for the first time in such miserable weather!

With a bit of a task mix-up this evening, we managed to organise a last minute flyering session to spread the word about Kings Christmas Trees, the profits from which fund The Feast, a weekly outreach meal for homeless and vulnerable people in the local community.

Kim, Amber and Clare chose the relaxed option, covering streets within walking distance of our start point at Glass Mill. Everyone else went up Lewisham Way, and covered a number of streets adjacent to Hilly Fields. Pairs ran off to cover a street at a time, reconvening at the corner of Hilly Fields (with those lucky first finishers "encouraged" to do some hill repeats to keep themselves warm!). Despite the soggy weather and a rather large stash of flyers, we soon got through them all, and headed back to Glass Mill for a cool down and an early finish (hill reps in the rain felt like more than enough hard work for one evening!).

Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm and dedication, even on a chilly wet evening. It's really quite something to spend the evening roaming around the cold dark streets of Lewisham with such an enthusiastic bunch of runners!

There's so much festive excitement coming up in the next week or so, including: our Christmas get together at Ninth Life, tree planting at Forster Memorial Park, one of my absolute favourite tasks sorting and packing at Big Red Box, GoodGym's Christmas extravaganza, and seeing the fruits of our flyering labours distributing Kings Christmas trees!

See you all soon I hope!

It was great to see you all this evening! A very warm welcome to this week's newcomer Marie-Claire (or MC for short) - go and give her a cheer - we hope to see you back again soon! It was lovely to see Olivia and Rosemary again this evening, and we gave a well-deserved round of applause to Oli who is GoodGym Lewisham's latest Task Force member!

Think about it, there must be flyer love // Down in the heart or hidden in the letterbox above

It was an intro of two halves from me this week... very light on news and events, yet very detailed on flyering plans (thanks to Sarah for sharing the reminder about GoodGym's 10th birthday bash this Friday!). We waved off our walking groups who were off to get a head start on their flyering, then we had another crack at the Big Wave to warm up - I think we're getting pretty good at it!

Where's that flyer love I keep thinking of? // Worlds are turning and we're just posting on

Like a Pied Piper in reverse, we set off as a group to slog up Belmont Hill towards Blackheath, dropping off pairs of runners at their allotted roads as we went along, before it was just me and Oli running up and down flights of stairs in Prendergast Road. We covered an incredible area between us, flyering about 1,000 homes which will make a massive difference to attendance at Age Exchange's Christmas Fair. Imagine how long it might have taken just a couple of volunteers to achieve the amount we did in an hour this evening - amazing work!

Things look so bad everywhere // In this whole world, what is (Christmas) fair?

The grand flyering plan (fingers and toes crossed) was for everyone to reconvene outside the Lewisham Tavern at 8.15pm for the short run back to Glass Mill and a cool down. I really appreciate how punctual you all were, it certainly saved me a lot of worrying. And for those of you lucky folk who made it back early, I hope you enjoyed the wall sits!

I could rise above on a flyer love // I will wait for it // I'm not too late for it

For those of you who took a few flyers home with you to spread the word a little further - I've listed this community mission for you to sign up to, for a bonus good deed in exchange for your extra help!

I could light the night up with my headtorch on fire // I could make the sun shine from pure desire

As we spent the evening flyering for a Christmas Fair, here are a few other events to sign up for to get you in the festive spirit, including:

• GoodGym Lewisham's christmas social at Ninth Life in Catford

• next week's group run, and flyering round 2 for King's Christmas Trees

• a festive favourite putting up Christmas decorations at Seniors

• the best human chain you will ever be a part of, packing Christmas food parcels for Big Red Box

There's that love, bring me flyer love // Bring me a flyer love

Many thanks to Steve Winwood for this week's pun inspiration "Higher Love", released back in 1986. So much mileage in those cracking lyrics, I've had a marvellous time wringing tenuous puns out of them!

It turns out GoodGym Lewisham are creatures of habit... meeting on the other side of the foyer due to half-term activities threw quite a few of you off! We welcomed two new runners this evening - go and give Aruna and Susie a cheer!

I popped along to GoodGym Leeds last week and was inspired by their warm-up activity, so decided to give the Big Wave a try, which seemed to go fairly well. Let's keep practicing!

Feeling sufficiently warm, we set off on a roundabout route to this evening's task. Even the long way round was less than a kilometer, but it turned out to be just long enough to arrive at just about the same time as our walking group.

A-bra-cadabra!

John greeted us with a very warm welcome, and gave us a helpful overview of the work that St Christopher's does in the local community. Their new shop has only been open for three weeks, so there was plenty still to do to continue getting them set up, including: getting mountains of clothes hung up ready to be priced, sorting racks of empty hangers into size order, and making sure all the bras were labelled with the right chest size.

Size matters.

John was extremely chuffed with what we achieved, reckoning that we'd tackled about a week's worth of hanging in less than an hour. Special mention has to go to Darryl for modelling the outfit of the evening - a pair of disco trousers and matching halterneck top! I imagine there's a few of us who might be back to hunt that one down (...or maybe just me!).

Many hands sort light shirts (and dark!).

After a short run back to Glass Mill, there was only one way to use up the spare time and energy - with a time trial! Thanks to everyone for participating and cheering with such enthusiasm, you did yourselves proud!

Thanks to Clare and Oli for this week's puns, Jacqueline for walk-leading, and to Rebecca and Oliver for back-marking!

See you next week for a spot of flyering for Age Exchange's Christmas Fair - sign up here.