The weather was a bit dull, but we had a great session yesterday – we helped the Scope’s new charity shop in 93 London Road to get ready for their great opening next Thursday, 28th April!

Nicole and Karen, leading the great opening, welcomed us at big arms and really appreciative of GoodGym ignition of superpower at the end of their tiring day! So, with the soundtrack music of Jim Reeves – He'll Have To Go played by the vinyl discs recorder, we dusted off all the new shelving units, hoovered the big new shop area, moved and smashed cardboard boxes for a greater Good!

Scope, is the disability equality charity in England and Wales; they provide practical information and emotional support when it's most needed and campaign relentlessly to create a fairer society. In the new charity shop there is a nice mural made by students of the Downs View College brightening a dedicated corner where the visitors can enjoy some resting and social time in the shop.

We had a really Good time, and we could not resist the temptation to try some of the dresses on – Donated second hands or gifted new, all is welcome here, especially more volunteers!

We are all invited to the great opening next week, hosting special guests like the local artist Jonny and Electra Fence! Can’t be missed.

A small band of 5 people arrived at the Scope charity shop on George St in Hove to be met by Heather who needed help sorting through stock. David, Tabitha, Jacob, Michael and Rosie were all present and correct,gloved up and masked up in various styles.

Having only opened on the previous Saturday the shop had been inundated with stock of all descriptions, from chic summer wear to Julio Iglesias albums. In line with current guidelines Heather and her staff are not allowed to touch anything for 48 hours that's been donated so as you can imagine there was plenty to sort.

Clothes were separated into summer and winter wear, hats were tagged, stickers written out and clothes sorted and hung.

There will be more to do judging by the huge pile of stock they'd received in only 3 days that I was shown.

Socially distanced group picture taken we all headed off into the dank evening.

Last night the Brighton Goodgymers took on storm Brendan, gaining some strength training as we ran against the swirling winds! A colossal effort from everyone as we ran along the seafront! Welcome to Tom who joined us for his group run; hope the weather hasn’t put you off joining us again as part of your training for the Brighton Marathon.

Last night was a night of two tasks; helping out at the Scope shop in Hove and delivering newsletters to the residents of Landsdowne Road for the Extinct Rebellion.

Eleven of us ran to George Street, meeting up with Tabitha, to help the lovely Heather with stock checking and sorting. Scope is a charitable organisation who support those with disabilities be recognised as contributing members of society. Emma and Bernard stock checked Christmas books and cards, Abi pulled out a selection of ladies’ belts from stock to be added to the accessories display, Roy and Jacob sorted through stock and helped David, Michelle and Tabitha pull winter clothes out of deep storage. Ollie was temporary lost to the back of the stock room while Sherman and Tom labelled ladies scarves, pulling out their favourites to share with the others! With some headway to the never ending work that Heather seems to have to do, we ran on back to the Brighton i360, completing a fartlek type run with the use of the lampposts along the seafront. Fartlek, which means speedplay, is a form of continuous interval training used to improve our reactive speed so we don’t get pipped at the post on raceday!

Tara, Frannie, Andy, Daisy and Rosie had the second task in hand as Rosie reports: A smaller group ran a shorter distance (or so we thought) to deliver "Hourglass", the appropriately-named Extinction Rebellion newsletter. Running up the steps and front paths of every house on Lansdowne Place and surrounding streets in Hove was a workout in itself and meant extra time for Tara's gruelling routine on the concrete blocks in front of the i360.

Back together again we shared in the other team’s fun; Tara put us through a series of body strengthening exercises, which this Goodgymer is very much feeling today! Back to base and stretching done, we headed out for our monthly social to the Dead Soul Wax bar.

Make sure you sign up for next week's run to St Lukes for some kitchen cleaning on behalf of the Real Junk Food Project.

Tonight 16 runners, including Lucy, joining us for the first time, jogged along the blustery sea front to Hove, with the faster runners stopping every once in a while to do some fun exercises whilst waiting for the more leisurely amongst us!

We headed to Scope charity shop on George Street and met the hard working Heather. we spent our time wisely, sorting out pairs of donated shoes into summer and winter (and some into rubbish) bags. Tara finished her previous charity shop purchases off nicely with an almost new pair of Timberland boots!

Shoes sorted we headed back down to Hove lawns and did a fitness session in groups of three. One person did Burpees and lunges, one person did sprints between the sea front and the main road, and the third did 2 footed jumps up as many of the steps in one jump as possible. Most of us managed 2 steps per jump, a couple of taller and more adventurous managed 3 steps. Bernard, our resident Parkour expert managed to jump up SIX steps in one go! This man is like a giant cricket!

From there we headed back to base at YHA with some of the group using it as a gentle warm down and some using it as an excuse to run up and down ramps along the seafront. I think we all agree that Sherman won the sprinting up slopes competition! A nice stretch at YHA to end a great evening.

This week yours truly covered the run while Tara and Helena are off enjoying a running holiday (running holiday, two words many would not put together!).

First off we gave a huge congratulations to Frannie for becoming just the fifth member of the 50 club at Brighton Goodgym. Despiting a long work commute she has still found time to pack in all those Good deeds, so there is no excuse for those of you more local! Achieving 50 means Frannie has been to exactly 50% of our Brighton group runs as this was our 100th Brighton group run! That's a lot of good deeds and hopefully communities helped in less than two years!

In the continued absence of our usual warm up spot we did some more stationary exercises before setting off into the glorious evening sun along the busy seafront. Weaving in and out of everyone enjoying the end of the day we covered the 3kms to the task in good time despite the warm weather.

Tonight we were helping Scope in their Hove Charity Shop. There were lots of fresh (and some not so fresh) bags of clothing to sort through to find the gems for the shop to sell. With Madelene and Sherman preparing the clothes for hanging everyone else set to sorting through the bags of clothes. It's amazing the things people donate to be sold, single socks with holes in, paint spattered clothes and plenty of underwear! None the less we made light work of it all and found some pretty good stuff in amongst the rubbish.

The task owner Heather said:

The help we give makes such a big difference despite the short time, she struggles for volunteers and with our sorting it means when she does get help they can get straight to sorting out the shop ready for selling!

We incorporated the fitness session into the run back doing some interval training between the lamp posts along Hove Promenade. There was a lot of good effort put in considering the warm weather and that a lot of people had not covered that distance for a while so well done to everyone.

Thanks to Sherman and Amro for helping out with photos and back marking and to everyone else for putting up with me this week, I'm off for a rest now see you next week!

I hate goodbyes, and tonight we had to do two of them. Both Martin & Rachael have been a part of Brighton Goodgym from the very start, both attending our launch night more than 18 months ago. Since then Rachael has achieved well in excess of 50 good deeds through group tasks and visits to her coach, whilst Martin is just shy of 50 good deeds through group tasks and missions. You have both been an integral part of Brighton Goodgym’s journey and your energy and positivity will be sorely missed. We all wish you the best of luck in your new lives in Manchester and Petersfield and hope you will join us again for a group run if you ever find yourselves back in Brighton on a Tuesday evening! And Martin, don’t get any ideas about representing Manchester at the Goodgym Olympics, unless of course they’re willing to offer a substantial transfer fee!

Other big news this week focussed on the Brighton Half marathon where we were represented by Roy & Michael who both completed the course in impressive times. My race was less successful as I retired with a damaged foot that meant I had to do this week’s run by bike.

So for this week’s good deed we had an unseasonably balmy 3km seafront run to get to Scope charity shop in Hove. The shop is a big fundraiser for a great charity aiming to improve and empower the lives of disabled people, and its also a great way of recycling all the unwanted clothes produced by modern shopping habits. Shop manager Heather set us to work on tagging bags full of summer clothes ready for the change of season as well as labelling books and shoes. It was a quite time consuming job and made us realise how much work goes on behind the scenes to prepare stock for the shop floor.

Task complete we enjoyed the 3km run back to base with a quick burst of press-up, squat and shuttle run relay and some hill sprints up the ramps before a few of us headed to the pub for a final farewell to Martin and Rachel.

See you next week for a longer run out to Moulescoomb to help out at the Good News Centre.