The fantastic GRACE - Greenwich Refugee Aid and Community Enterprise - needed a hand clearing out and cleaning an upstairs room. They're a great bunch of people doing really valuable work, so what better way to spend part of a Saturday afternoon? Darryl and Jacqueline beavered away with broom, vacuum cleaner and mop, and even lured a passing Sarah in to help out for a bit while on the way to the skip. A room that started out as a dirty mess is now cleaner and ready for use. GRACE is a group run favourite - hopefully we'll be back there soon.

Welcome to those running their first group run with us last night, I hope you enjoyed yourselves!

A super quick warm up (off the grass as it was pretty muddy) and we were on our way to GRACE. It's a pretty busy road that we follow the whole way there so not exactly picturesque but we kept together as a group with Ian doing an excellent job of backmarking.

We arriving at GRACE, picking up a couple of extra goodgymmers that had met us at the task.

Season's Sortings

The task for this evening was to sort the winter clothes (that had already been sorted once, so I wasn't expecting any of the usual random finds) into categories of: mens, womens, girls and boys and then sort further into sizes.

Once the sorted sorted clothes were in their crates, we needed to bag them up and label them. There was an excellent labeling system going on, making it all very streamlined.

I couldn't resist putting on some plastic gloves myself and joining in the sorting.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Ski-suit

Winter was done and all in the correct bags ready to be shipped, we can forget about winter now, it's gone. Time to move onto summer!!

We made a start on the sorted cage of summer clothes with only 10 minutes left, we didn't quite make it through the entire cage but we gave it a good start.

No one seemed to want to stop so I had to announce that whatever you're holding....you have to wear. No, don't worry, just had to get it into its correct pile and be in position for the group photo.

We began to make our way back to Glassmill and at that point I realised Emma wasn't with us and I was sure I was the last person to leave GRACE. Turns out she wasn't spending the night sorting clothes, she'd just got the bus home.

A quick stretch in the warmth of Glassmill and working out just how short of a run next weeks task is, it was time for one more document check (4 in one evening, got to be a record)!

If you'd like to take part in missions that require a DBS check or you'd like to start coach running, please bring your ID documents to a group run so that I can check them.

A group of red t-shirt’s gathered in the foyer of Glassmill can only mean 1 thing, it was time for some running and doing good! This week we were off to GRACE which always means lots of sorting and organising.

A quick recap of this weeks news:

• Well done to Bradley who came second at the Chiswick Half Marathon at the weekend and to Liv who ran her first marathon in Amsterdam, amazing running from both of you.
• A huge good luck to Stephen who is running Venice Marathon this weekend, I hope it’s not the same conditions as it was last year when I ran it!!
• On 2nd November we have a GoodGym takeover of Hilly Fields Parkrun, if you would like to volunteer, drop Adele an email with what role you fancy doing.

We began the evening with a quick headcount in a rather oddly shaped circle, that wasn’t really a circle, but I went with it, it worked. And then straight into a game of “I shout a body part and a number and those who are leftover have to do squats”, I’m sure the game has a proper name really! Then we set off as a group through the centre of Lewisham, detouring for some roadworks and up the busy main road to GRACE, it’s not the most picturesque of routes.

We arrived promptly, picking up people on the way and great work by those that met us at the task, getting stuck in before we arrived!

The tasks for this evening were pretty straightforward, sorting through cages of clothes and organising them into men, women and children piles and then removing the items that couldn’t be of use and saving the items that could be sold in the shop.

And the other task was sorting boxes of baby clothes into size order and packed neatly to condense the amount of boxes.

The first difficult task was getting the plastic gloves out of the box! Everyone got to work and there was quite a lot of concentration on organising the clothes until we found some very questionable pieces of clothing, see pictures!

It was time to be wrapping up but there was still half a cage of clothes to sort and put in bags so it was all hands on deck to get everything sorted, I couldn’t write labels for the bags quick enough!

Group photo done and we made our back back to Glassmill to stretch and try to remember what next weeks task is..it’ll be a good one.

Seven, yes SEVEN, Good Gymers from several different boroughs attended a special Community Mission on a Tuesday night at GRACE - Greenwich Refugee Aid and Community Enterprise - to help with a major shipment of clothing to help refugees in Greece. We were met by the lovely Louise who soon put us all to work, powered by chocolate, biscuits and tea (we always get looked after at GRACE!). Anyone who has ever been to GRACE will know that sooner or later, you always have to handle pants, and tonight was no exception, with the prize for biggest pants going to Martin who found an enormous pair (why do people donate these things, why?) All pants go into the rag bin along with any stained or damaged items - and are sold for rags, so old pants can still be useful!!!

We quickly sorted through two huge cages of items, and were then put to task on moving items of heavy furniture around for collection - tasks that just can't be done in the daytime with only one or two volunteers. These types of tasks are perfect for the Good Gym crew - we love a bit of lifting and moving (makes a change from all the pants-handling). Once completed, we once again set off into the dark and onto the streets of Lewisham, with a warm glow inside.

On a fine July evening, 25 runners took a 5km round-trip to help out at GRACE in Lee.

Thank you Oli for our marvellous title pun and others throughout this report.

Were you up at Hilly Fields on Saturday morning? Did you see a group of people picking up litter? That was us! The park is particularly messy at this time of year, with people having picnics, but not taking their rubbish home. We're having a regular litter-pick before parkrun, details for this Saturday here. The parkrun was a place of great jollity this week, with Jacqueline hitting her 250th run (wow!) and Vic celebrating her birthday. It was also pacer week and it was great to see some familiar faces helping others reach a goal.

NEWS

• Many of you took on the Big Half earlier this year and I know some of you felt inspired to give it a go next year. Well, now's your chance to grab a place! We have a few community places for £10 each so, if you are committed to taking part, email me with the subject heading 'Big Half'.

• We had Simone from the Lewisham Local Card with us this week, hearing all about what we do, why we do it and how it makes a difference to us and the people that we visit. To find out more about the card and to register for one yourself, have a look here.

• This week Louise hit her 50th good deed milestone! This is quite speedy work, with her goal being to reach this point within a year. She totally smashed it, with a fair bit of GoodGym tourism and a few weekend missions. Well done Louise, here's to the next 50!

It's always lovely to welcome new faces to GoodGym Lewisham and all our Lewisham Love this week goes to Daniel and Jez, who were joining us for their first ever GoodGym group run (it was great also to see Charlotte and Sophie, who joined us after a break).

A very big thank you this week to Emma, for leading up front and to Amber for back-marking. We had a little warm-up to get the heart racing, before heading out along Lee High Road to help out at GRACE. At the task, Louise split us into four teams, with each group heading to a different part of the space. We had:

• TEAM PAIRLESS WHISPER - sorting through shoes, pairing them up, then putting them in the appropriate place (there might have been a fair few odd shoes left over!)
• TEAM BAGG(SY)ING - sorting clothing into various categories, bagging it up and moving it into the storage space
• TEAM IT'S COT TO BE-BE-BE-BE-BE-BEE PERFECT - reuniting various bed and cot parts that had been mixed up and sorting out the screws,dowels and instructions
• TEAM BUGGY - checking over and reassembling some buggies that had been mis-matched

Each team worked with great commitment, as time rushed by. There were moments where it looked like the clothes might not make it into the bags, or the screws, which had been ordered and laid out so meticulously, might not be matched with their bed or cot. We shouldn't have worried though because, in true GoodGym Lewisham style, we wrapped everything up in the last few minutes, ready to run back to base for a very quick 'plankerpillar' - good work!

Next week we will be visiting our good friends at Seniors, this is a longer run, of around 7km (with views!) and will be led by Conroy, sign up here. In the meantime, I would like to wish strength and determination to Kim, who will be taking on her first ever ultra distance event at the weekend, at the amazing Race to the Stones. With the support of Tom, who has tackled the longer distances before. They will be covering 100km over two days and camping en route. I'm sure you'll agree that Kim has been on an incredible and inspiring running journey and we will be behind them all the way, willing them to push on to the finish.

Go Kim! Go Tom! You can do it!

During an almighty downpour, 16 determined superstars ran 5km and helped to sort through clothing at GRACE.

Oh my, this is not the kind of weather that prompts most people to pull on their running shoes and head out! The rain and general gloom didn't stop this wonderful group of people from doing just that though and we even had some first timers on board! A big welcome and Lewisham Love to Liz, Zara and Juan - if you can make this kind of evening your first run, you're made of tough stuff! We also welcomed Girija, who normally runs with GoodGym Southwark, we hope you enjoyed our SE13 brand of goodness!

Well done to everyone who ventured out yesterday to help at Hilly Fields junior parkrun, what a team! It takes 20+ volunteers to make it happen each week, so it made a big difference to have our helping hands on timers, barcode scanners, tokens, marshalling and tail walking. On Saturday, some of the same people had been up there doing a quick pre-parkrun litter-pick. We will try and do this every week over the summer, as it gets really bad, with people having picnics, but not clearing up afterwards - join us next Saturday if you want to make a difference.

Another chance to do some weekend good! This coming Saturday we have a community mission at the beautiful Grove Park Nature Reserve, meet there at 11am and clear a space for the bees, what a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning/lunch time!

We were due to visit the Wildcat Wilderness this evening, but it was clear as soon as I woke up that it would be waterlogged and too slippery to work safely on our task. We had been asked by GRACE if we could help them urgently with preparing for a big shipment to Greece on June 23rd, so things worked out perfectly in the end! Kim and Amber led the way at the front of the group - thank you both - with Itmari keeping us together at the back.

Bags of fun (and baby clothes)

We arrived at GRACE promptly and were met by Louise, who was taken aback by how many of us there were! We were shown through into the main space and were impressed with just how much work has been going on since we were last here. You could see the effort that has been made to organise everything, with boxes neatly packed, stacked and labelled. Our job for the evening was to pull out donations bags and sort the clothes into summer, winter and babies', with the summer clothes going to Greece and the rest being stored until later in the year.

Questionable styles on teetering piles

Quite quickly, we had clothes flying to the various piles, with any dirty or unsuitable items being thrown in the 'rags' bin. On the whole it was a disappointing visit in terms of odd finds, with very little on the pants front. This was made up for though, by Vic and Oli's game of random garment Twister (just check the photos)! As quickly as time ticked away, the clothes stacked up and we had sorted enough items for Louise and the team to organise for the shipment.

As we gathered at the back door to leave, there was a deep and foreboding rumble of thunder. We gritted our teeth, pulled up our hoods and headed for home. Really well done to everyone who made it along tonight, it wasn't easy running back in that heavy rain! Next week we are at Beecroft Garden Primary School, so a 5k run and an outdoor task (please be sunny!). If you are thinking of parkrunning on Saturday, then Hilly Fields is the place to be, as our very own Kim will be running her 50th parkrun, let's help her celebrate!

Don't forget, we're coming up to our annual summer social at Wildcat Wilderness - just bring something to share on the BBQ (or salad etc). All details and sign up here, please do sign up, so we know how many to prepare for, it's going to be just lovely.

Thank you Oli for this week's excellent puns!