Well done to the brave GoodGymers that made it out of the house in the rain to take part in the last minute change of task. The task for the evening was to clear our start point of litter.

Glass Mill is a windy spot and there's always litter around, sometimes even flying around if it's really windy!

The group split into pairs and 30min later we had bags and bags of rubbish. A shorter than usual group run but by no means less impactful.

Don't forget it's the Christmas Social on Friday at Bella Roma!!

With the day off, Sam arrived nice and early to open up Old Spike as he welcomed in Andrada, Daryl, Elena, Gemma, Isaac, Katy, Maria, Nathan, Nelly, Olive (who reached her target for the year tonight), Phil and Tim! We even had newbie, Andy join us. Welcome Andy!

As we all gathered at Old Spike, Sam did his longer speech for Andy as he talked about the ways he can get involved with GoodGym further. After a few weeks of skipping the warm-up, Sam decided to do it tonight as the run to the task wasn't far. After the warm-up, everyone gave their answer to tonight's ice-breaker question.

Since it was International Men's Day over the weekend, Sam's ice-breaker question for tonight was: The theme of this year's International Men's Day is "Take action and stay healthy", can you give one practical tip for Men or male identify to stay mentally healthy? Secondly, who has been a big influential person in your life that is male/male-identifying?

For big influences, we had people's other halves, Dads, brothers, friends and even primary/secondary teachers made the list. In terms of tips, we had going out for a walk to clear your headspace, but the common theme was to be encouraged to talk about your feelings.

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Finding salvation in cleaning

As we left Old Spike, Sam lead the way whilst Olive backmarked as we ran towards Peckham Rye Park and looped back at the cafe towards Nunhead. We did meet tens of runners running with Peckham Pacers. Yet, we got to Salvation Army on Nunhead Green just in time to meet Tiziana, Emma and Vic who met us there at the task.

With such a large group, Tiziana had to split us into two. One smaller group consisting of Daryl, Emma, Gemma, Nathan, Nelly and Olive were given the cleaning task. They took brooms, hoovers and cleaning cloths as they cleaned the charity shop/cafe's toilets, hallway, stairs and offices. Phil and Vic joined them in sweeping the charity shop as there were a few dusty corners. The rest of the team were upstairs in the library/bookshop space to sort out books in terms of their categories: Biography, Children's, Fiction and Thriller/Action.

The 40 minute session zoomed by and we managed to finish the cleaning, but there were still plenty of books to sort out. We will be back in three weeks' time to finish this task off and give the space another spruce up.

After our group photo, we said our goodbyes and ran literally 600 metres to get back to Old Spike for a lovely stretch before a few of us decided to go to the Old Nag's Head for a Guinness or two.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! Firstly, we welcomed Alex for his first GoodGym session. It was a nice short dry run both ways. The task was manageable given the size of volunteers we had. Thanks to Olive for backmarking and ensuring no-one gets left behind. We will be back in 3 weeks!

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Thank You to Tiziana

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tiziana for preparing all the equipment and tasks for us to do in advance! We're back in three weeks' time to finish what we started with the books!

Our task for this week was to continue the double digging at the Tiny Forest in Ladywell Fields. It's a tough workout and the soil has become full of stones as we have got further towards the end.

I had sold the group run on the fact we'd be driving in the fence posts with the fancy tool only to find Isaac had beat us to it! Great work Isaac, we should have spent less time chatting at Glass Mill.

We split into groups, as many as possible forming a line to tackle the digging and then the rest carrying the mulch to a spot closer to the Tiny Forest.

Pain stopped play

Another week, another GoodGym Lewisham twisted ankle, this time Oli's foot landed in a hole but he did manage to stay upright and not drop the bucket of mulch!

The Tiny Forest team now only have about 2 foot to dig or 2 double digs. Then its time for planting of the saplings, the community missions is happening on 9th December, all details here

P.S. Enjoy the really really blurry photos!