Dispelling all myths about today being 'Blue Monday', 25 happy runners covered 6.5km and gathered, carried and threw many Christmas trees (for recycling!).

Special thanks this week go to Tom for our treemendous title pun...and he wasn't even with us!

Every Monday in Lewisham is Red Monday, there's something about running with a group of other people, chatting (and laughing) as you go, that makes the world seem a much better place. This Monday was also Medal Monday, a Mega Medal Monday. In December, a group of us joined in the Run up to Christmas, a virtual challenge to motivate ourselves and each other to keep going during the party season. As a team, we collectively ran 1269.5km! Today, I received the medals in the post (along with some Christmassy chocolates!) and we gathered to celebrate our achievements as a team. Extra shout-outs to our 100 (and150km!)+ runners Vic, Chris, Sarah, Conroy and, with a total of 157km, our ultra-athlete, Jacqueline. Well done everyone, it was all about the team and we all did brilliantly, supporting and encouraging throughout!

Fantastree!

Amongst our team was Monica, who this week is celebrating her one-year anniversary with GoodGym. In this time, she has carried out an incredible 77 good deeds, with regular missions and weekly coach runs, great work Monica, it's lovely having you as part of GoodGym Lewisham.

Tonight, we welcomed Emmet over to Lewisham for the first time. He has previously run with our friends at GoodGym Croydon, so we opened our Lewisham arms and hope he enjoyed our particular brand of goodness.

Did you see that rain earlier?! Yikes! I watched it through a skylight and hoped it wouldn't do that between 6.45 and 8.30pm and, of course, the GoodGym magic happened and we were tackling only blustery gales. The rain had made our warm-up spot a little slippery though, so we used our might (and balance) to remain upright through our hand-shake challenge, squat-high-fives and knee-lifts. Tonight's task was a little different, we weren't heading to a venue, but getting to know our local streets a little more intimately. Up at Hilly Fields there are a few recycling points for Christmas trees, but the streets are still littered with forgotten greenery (or dry, brown twigs in some cases). Our job was to seek out these trees and add them to the pile, yes, running with trees, along the street!

Fir goodness sake!

As we arrived at the junction of Marsala Road and Ellerdale Street, we split into two teams, one taking Marsala and the other heading up to Algernon Road, with all eyes peeled for those beautiful trees. Head torches trained on paths and gardens, we soon knew when a tree had been found, with whoops of joy echoing around the street! Regrouping in Ladywell, we saw happy faces emerging from the darkness, trees bouncing between them. Here, Lucy and Kim took a detour to pick up Lucy's parents' tree, very conveniently shorn of its branches for ease of carrying! Around we went, causing heads to turn, up and over Adelaide Avenue and to deposit our first lot of trees, seven in total!

Turkey twizzler

In our area we have lots of runners, many regulars at Hilly Fields parkrun. We also have a great community on Strava, each following the other's activities and marvelling at the occasional twizzle. 'What's this?' you ask, it's a twizzle, yes, a twizzle! When you see a series of adjacent, straight roads, go for it, run up and down them and enjoy the way they look on your Strava map :) So tonight we did our first bit of a twizzle, with trees (a trizzle?). Up and down we went, Phoebeth, Francemary, Arthurdon, Gordonbrock (aren't the names interesting, reportedly named after the children of the builder!). These roads were most fruitful, with many people now carrying all or part of a tree (or a wreath, does that count?).

Back now, towards Hilly Fields, with the odd whoop as another tree was hoisted out of a garden. With a ceremonial chucking onto the pile, we counted out loud, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...but we had to get to twenty! On we went, with Jacqueline suddenly darting off like a whippet, remembering where she'd seen one earlier, then a last run to the park and a grand total of...twenty-two Christmas trees! Superb work everyone!

It's interesting how very light you feel when you run after carrying a tree! I'm not sure how much this helped us get up the hill though (apart from Emma, who flew up!). The view up here is amazing, especially at night, so we got our breath back whilst enjoying the lights. Back to base and a rather special treat. On Saturday, there is a crumble competition in Catford (really, we have it all round here) and our very own Stephen has entered. Knowing that we're always a bit peckish after a group run, he had made a selection of little crumbles for us to sample (I'm saying this in a very high-pitched voice because really, how lovely is that?!). The foyer of Glass Mill was now a-buzz with the sounds of 'Oooooh!' and 'Aaaaahhh' and a scene of utter contentment. If you want to fill yourself to the brim with sweet/fruity/crumbly deliciousness, the details are here and, of course, we wish Stephen all the best from his chief tasters.

Next week is our BIRTHDAY!!! We will be two! My, haven't we grown? We will visit one of our regular tasks, over at the wonderful Crofton Books and will celebrate together afterwards with some food and drink (we're still open to suggestions for a venue, but let's be quick!). Also, if you haven't already entered, have a look at the Big Half, we are lucky to have a massive team of GoodGym runners taking part and would love to welcome any first-timers to join us.

See you next week, it's going to be EPIC!

With maximum layerage, twenty runners took to the streets of Lewisham to cover 7km and wrap up Christmas at Seniors.

BIG thank you to Caireen for our rather lovely title pun this week. You know one of Caireen's puns won the International Pun of the Month last year, we have high hopes.

Welcome to GoodGym Lewisham!

All our Lewisham Love goes to Katy this week, for being our only first-timer. It was a pleasure though to welcome back a few runners who have been either busy working, travelling or just hibernating for a while, always lovely to invite people back! We also enjoyed celebrating the fact that Caireen, one of our longest running members, did her first ever mission at the weekend! See, you can pick them up at any point in your GoodGym 'career', no problem! It sounds like it was a lot of fun too, with a top team of friends to fend off the spiders. Did you know that we have a GoodGym-wide challenge happening this month? Well, we're doing brilliantly, with dozens of deeds and hundreds of kilometers already covered by Team Lewisham. We do need to catch up with those deed-doing machines in Bristol though, so make sure you link your Strava and GoodGym profiles and make every mile count!

Run for the hills!

Our warm-up had us running around in circles, working out our left from our right and then finding ourselves stuck in the mud. All good fun to warm up our bodies, ready to run. Our run this week was slightly longer than usual, with a total of 7km, thank you to Clare for being tonight's back-marker. We ran it mostly through Ladywell Fields and enjoyed a good hard push to reach the top of the hill, 'Just a bit more hill before we go downwards!' At Seniors, we were met by Cathy, who showed us the various jobs to get on with and a top team of de-decorators busied themselves, while the rest of the group ventured down into the extensive cellars. When I got down there, Stephen and Tom were disappearing into a sliver of space, carrying a heavy roll of carpet. In another area, Conroy was removing the baubles from a tree and others were exploring the warren of little rooms that would have, at some point in the past, been used by the servants. Cathy was telling us about their plans to research the history of the building and the surrounding area, with lots of connections already discovered amongst users of the space.

With our crack team of treemendous tinsel tacklers, the decorations were quickly packed away and a steady stream of people carried the boxes down into the cellar (cue more exploration, this space is fascinating!). Not wanting to stand around, others grabbed cloths and started cleaning sellotape off the windows until Cathy informed us that there was a box of chocolates in the entrance, 'Down tools!' We look forward very much to returning here soon, either to work inside the building, or in the spring when we can once again work in the amazing garden.

Sugar rush

Fuelled by Cadbury's, we drove hard upwards towards Blythe Hill and the stunning view of a sparkly London. Over and down to Ladywell Fields we went, arriving at Glass Mill with flushed cheeks and big smiles. In the foyer, we got down to some good core work, with a Core-athlon, working on all three disciplines of swimming, cycling and running ('But we've already done the running!'). Next week we will be covering as much of Lewisham as possible, sweeping up as many discarded Christmas trees as we can, expect local news stories of 'Lines of Christmas trees spotted flying along Adelaide Avenue!' Why not sign up? Don't forget also to bring your speedy legs for our Monthly Time Trial and to have a think about where we might go for our birthday social on January 22nd. See you soon!

As Storm Eleanor whipped around, twenty toughies ran 5km across Lewisham to sort through donations at GRACE.

It might have been one of the grimmest evenings to go running, but somehow, all these amazing people felt the need to pull on their Lycra and head on down to Glass Mill to do some good. Additional kudos and Lewisham Love go to our FOUR newcomers and one tourist, welcome to first-timers Mary, Tom, Mary Anne and Sarah and to Hannah, who was crossing the border from (our gorgeous neighbours over in) Bromley (I might be biased, they're my Tuesday night lovelies...). If you click on their names you can give them a cheer, go on, it feels lovely to get a cheer :)

A big thank you tonight to Jo, who has made my life so much easier by coming up with this week's title pun, good work Jo, I can get an early night now!

So, this storm. A few of us were blown this way by bike and some came flying through the doors sideways, which made our warm-up a bit more challenging. Well done to everyone for staying upright and for entering into the games with gusto! Gathering round, we set our various devices going (did you all get new watches for Christmas, there was a fair bit of beeping going on?!) and set off towards Lee. Thank you to Caireen for being our back-marker this week, making sure nobody was left behind (or blown away).

On arriving at GRACE, we were quickly given direction by Claire, who pointed out the many bags of clothes, shoes and random bits and bobs, which were to be sorted into the great big white bags, with the various categories, women, men, children, babies. As always, everyone grabbed a bag and got stuck in. Anyone who has been here before, will have noticed the changes over the time we have been visiting and we always marvel at the progress that has been made - when we came to this space the first time, it was an empty shell, full of dust and in need of a lot of attention. Now we see a shop space, a community space and an area to sort and prepare clothing to be taken to those who need it.

Of course, it wasn't long before the pants were out. It's tradition now for someone to uncover some either massive or 'interesting' items of underwear and tonight we hit the jackpot with some wide pants AND some frilly knickers. Good work Amber, Vic and Hannah!

Quite soon all of the white sacks were full to overflowing and full time had passed (we did push on for a tiny bit longer!). We said our goodbyes and promised to return in a few weeks, as Claire and her team have a few trips coming up and could do with our help. If you want to help out at other times, check the website here to find out how you can get involved.

Heading back, I invited Conroy to take the lead, while I wheezed away at the back (yes, even your robust trainer feels under the weather sometimes). Thank you Conroy for guiding everyone home and for keeping the group moving until we all regrouped for some press-ups and tricep-dips at the curvy bench. A quick round of planks (ouch, we've neglected those over Christmas!) and it was time for a stretch. Don't forget to sign up for next week, when we will run over to Seniors to take down the Christmas decorations (this is a slightly longer run, of around 7km in total) and also link your Strava to your GoodGym profile, to make sure all your miles count towards our January challenge!

Great work team!