Love was in the air! ❤️

10 love-sick (not really) GoodGymers opted for on a date night with GoodGym.

8 out of 10 cats...GoodGymers were up for the just under 3k group run to Salvation Army Camberwell Corps and met Sam at Old Spike. As runners came in, we caught up on our week and the festivities of Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) and Valentine's Day, the former social date was a more preferred topic. As 18:45 arrived, Sam promptly went through his usual GG intro speech and his ice-breaker snap-poll for the night was to do with, of course, Valentine's Day. Would you prefer to receive a dinner, gift or flowers? Everyone voted for dinner... Sam even prepared an ice-breaker question: Awkward / unusual first date question or scenario?

We had from consoling a Prince fan upon hearing he had died to the date assuming our GoodGymer took drugs in the bathroom (she just had a runny nose...) and from headbutting, the date leaving half through a date to spirit animals not matching....there's been a few awkward dates amongst us.

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You colour my world

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group through the backstreets of Peckham and up Chadwick Road (the hill) and down towards Camberwell. We were quite pacey this time with Paulin backmarking (both ways). At the task, we met Valentina, Richard and their son, Lucas as well as newbie, Diana and arriving as we just arrived, Sander.

Richard and Valentina had prepared loads of paint, paint brushes and liners to put down to protect the carpeted floor. Yet, before we got going with the painting, our runners got a deserved drink of water, biscuits and heart-shaped Haribos sweets.

Since there were 10 of us and plenty of painting to be done, everyone picked up a paint brush, stirred the paint and concentrated on their section of the entrance hall. Diana and Joely concentrated on painting the main door from inside as it had received a lot of marks over the years. Isaac and Paulin had their fair share of paint on them as they took on the ceiling and high wall roller paint brushes. David, Fi, Laura, Sander, and Steve had smaller brushes to paint the finer parts of the walls.

In 45 minutes, with romantic tunes blasting, we managed to complete the first coat of paint. It was such a therapeutic task and we will be happy to come back in two weeks' time to put on a second coat. But next time, we will ensure we have plenty of time at the end to clean the paint brushes as we left that to the last minute and I feel guilty for leaving it all for Valentina to do!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night on Valentine's Day! Appreciate the love and the faster than usual pace on the run there and back! It was lovely to meet you Diana and thanks for coming back for your second GoodGym session, Joely. Finally, a massive thank you to Paulin for backmarking on both runs. We're off to Thorlands Gardens next Wednesday to continue with the garden project there!

Sam arrived late at Thorlands to see Alex, Lindy, Jo and Joely at the woodchip pile collecting woodchip and logs for the path back at the Kitchen garden in Thorlands. Louise was waiting there as she raked the first delivery of woodchip.

At this point, Simon joined us as he wanted to take stock of what we will be doing today. We needed to fix a few things that was done on Wednesday night as well as concentrate on a small area.

We stopped moving woodchip and re-dug up some logs for Alex to saw to ensure it would fit into the trench and be less of a trip hazard.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team moved the woodchip soil from the pile where it was to be part of the start of a new bed in the Kitchen garden.

The last half hour was concentrated on preparing the one metre width woodchip path going towards the clubhouse. Slowly, but surely the path will be created.

A warm welcome to Joely for coming and claiming her first good deed!