With the Labour party conference in full swing our usual warm up area had been turned into a little mini Labour festival area so speech and warm up took place in a rather blustery spot to the side of the YHA. We welcomed back Bernard, returning after a sojourn in Stockport, where he’s been getting involved in Goodgym northern style, shared the news that Oz has finally met his coach and congratulated Roy on an oh so close to sub 21 park run PB!

Sloane Court was our destination tonight, just a kilometre or so away, its a council run seniors housing scheme with a lot of garden. meaning a lot of weeds! Resident Tony set us on weeding the patio and various beds, cutting back some overgrown sage from the herb garden, chopping down some tall and spindly thistles and clearing a bed in front of a vacated flat, ready for a new resident to make it heir own. Once again we made a big difference in a short space of time, but the difference we’ve made over the past 2 years to this garden is quite phenomenal and really something I’m quite proud of. Hope you are too!

The charming Tarner Park hosted our fitness session of a Tabata of skaters, Russian twists and broad jumps (did you have springs in your shoes Bernard?!)

See you next week when we are helping Cardinal Newman high school look after their grounds.

What a strange saying, ‘many happy returns of the day!” A phrase you only really see written in old fashioned birthday cards, I guess it means I hope you have a lovely day on your birthday and that you have many more happy birthdays to come. Well this week was a special birthday for Goodgym as we celebrated 10 years of getting fit by doing good. And here’s to many more happy returns of today!

A bumper crop of 4 first timers tonight as we welcomed Tom, Tiger, Oliver & Natasha. Great to have you along, hope to see you all again!

Regular task owner Cllr David Gibson met us at the bottom of Southover Street, where a sub group of Frannie, Sherman & Juliette did a little bit of painting over graffiti and litter picking. Regular runners will know that we have painted over a huge amount of scribbling in this area but every time we visit it seems like there is a little bit less, so we have definitely made a huge difference, and I know local residents are very grateful for our efforts.

The bulk of us headed up to May Road, right at the top of Elm Grove, one of Brighton’s biggest hills so well done to us! This is a road that has overcome huge anti social behaviour problems by local residents deciding enough is enough and getting together to take back control! It’s a really nice road with lots of trees and shrubs that all need a bit of pruning and TLC. Daisy and Amy set us to work on clearing suckers from the bases of trees, pruning some buddleia, pulling out weeds from the cracks in the pavement and general weeding and tidying up. In about 25 minutes we got loads done and Daisy was delighted with how much we achieved.

Back to sea level for a fitness session on the Level. Just time for a 6 minute AMRAP (as many reps as possible) of 10 curtsey lunges, 10 hop squats, 10 crunches and 10 shuttle runs to keep in with the 10 years birthday theme!

From there some of us went straight on to Bardleys for our fish’n’chips birthday celebrations whist the rest ran back to base to gather belongings before joining up with the rest of the gang. We had 18 of us at the celebrations, including Michael who’s been unable to run for a few weeks due to injury, hope to have you back in a couple of weeks.

Big thanks to Juliet for organising the social, apparently she’s already decided where we’re going for Christmas!

Well done to all, here’s to another 10 years of getting fit by making a difference!

So tonight we learnt what a Cat Creep is!

One of the great things about Goodgym is getting to know the nooks and crannies of the place you live and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who, before this task had never been to the Roundhill Cat Creep. The 116 steps (you counted them!) lead steeply from the bottom of Roundhill Crescent to the top of Wakefield Road and it has to be one of the steepest alleyways in Brighton. So a Cat Creep is a local term for an alleyway.

So thanks to regular Goodgymmer Steffania for linking us up with the Roundhill Society, a neighbourhood group who had organised a community clean up to tackle all the vegetation growing over and up the Cat Creep. With plenty to do they were delighted to have 15 extra pairs of hands to scrape, sweep, lop, cut and bag up all the greenery overhanging the alleyway and nearby Wakefield Road.

Apparently the Cat Creep provides a crossing point for toads between gardens and to prove this was the case we saw one!

Once the stairway was clear it presented the perfect opportunity for a fitness session of 2 ascents, with fast feet touching every step so 232 in total!

In other news…well done to Frannie, who ran a 10km race without walking on Sunday and good luck to Oz who is meeting his new coach for the first time this weekend.

Hopefully see lots of you at our Preston Park park run meet up on Saturday and next week we will be celebrating 10 years of Goodgym! See you then!

The black t-shirts were out in force tonight with Sherman, Frannie, Helena, David & Juliet being joined by Roy sporting his at a group run for the first time. You all wear it well!

It certainly felt like summer is on the way out with the temperature several degrees down on last week’s scorcher. And nothing signals the changing of the seasons like going back to school , which was where we were headed tonight for our first visit to Cardinal Newman School, one of the biggest state schools in Brighton.

It was a tough 3km to get there with some challenging hills to keep us warm. On arrival we learnt the planned task of clearing a courtyard was postponed so instead we were armed with gloves and litter pickers to tackle the school playing field. We found small bits of litter all over the field but the richest pickings were found by going deep into the woody edges where we found the usual suspects of copious old plastic wrappers, bottles along with 2 cricket balls!

A slightly different route back took us the the sensory garden at St Anne’s Wells Park where David’s sound effects whilst completing a minutes worth of tricep dips were a treat for anyone’s ears! We also tackled some planks, some hurdling moves to increase hip flexibility and some rows with old bicycle inner tubes, all great exercises to work on posture and mobility for running.

Thanks to Roy who is back on top punning form and starts the new term at top of the class for tonight’s pun.

See you next week when we’ll be visiting another not visited before part of town and helping a neighbourhood group keep their pavements clear from encroaching vegetation.

See your there!

The big news tonight was All About a Roy as he became the latest in a recent spate of runners reaching the magic milestone of a whopping 50 Good Deeds! Oh Roy! What an achievement! And brilliantly timed so you didn’t have to share any of the limelight with any of the other recent entrants to the 50 club! Now If I were a Roy I would probably have offered to write this run report myself so I could big myself up but as he didn’t the task has fallen to me to write an Ode to Roy! The best thing about Roy as far as I’m concerned is if he drinks more than 2 pints at the monthly social you’ve got a pretty good chance of persuading him to write the run report. He’s also thought of a couple of really good puns. Back in his glory days he came up with School Runnings & Back to the Fuscia and I remain hopeful that his recent dry spell will soon be over.

In other news we had 3 new runners joining us for their first run, we were very happy to meet Oz, Joe & Mike. Welcome!

After a 1.5km run to meet Cllrs David & Elaine we split into sub groups to tackle various tasks around the Hanover & Elm Grove ward. Our recent efforts at painting over graffiti have massively reduced its impact in the area and we continued our efforts tonight with Emma & Helena tackling some small new scribbles including a very Badly Drawn Roy and Katharine & David spraying over some junction boxes & bins.

8 other runners including Roy (Roy Division?) took on a bigger area just off the Lewes Road and the pictures show quite a transformation. Great work!

Everybody else worked around the area at the bottom of Elm Grove litter picking and battling the bind weed in front of the Percy Wagner Almshouses and the collective efforts of 20 Brighton Goodgymers has done wonders to keep the neighbourhood looking smart.

The Fitness Session on the Level involved a pack of cards and a game that led to Carly being crowned King of Burpees! We wiill definitely play this game again, perhaps in a slightly different format for no other reason than it opens a whole new pack of card related pun possibilities!

Have a great Bank Holiday folks, see you next Tuesday!