On a mild but fresh Halloween evening 10 runners took on one of our longest distances to help out at St George’s Hall in Moulescoomb.

Big thanks to Helena for back marking and coming up with the brilliant idea of wearing fairy lights to make herself more visible. It was very useful to be able to look back along the road and see exactly how far away they were, and the ever late Beth (damn those trains!) had a good target to chase down and catch up!

As it was Halloween we chatted about scary situations we’d been in and various fears and phobias as we ran the 4.4km to St George’s hall. Task owner Anke gave us a very warm welcome and we quickly set to work on the task in hand. Martin, Sherman & Helena got stuck in to removing a large, overgrown bush that was making the adjacent alleyway a bit dark and scary. It took a lot of sawing and hacking and cutting & pulling and the job was completed in less than 30 minutes. Elsewhere Juliet & Frances did a grand job of litter picking and everybody else got stuck into reducing the height of the bushes along the front, with Louise going in particularly hard and short!

We saw lots of kids and families out and about wearing Halloween costumes and trick or treating and Anke provided us with some yummy biscuit treats to fuel us for the return run.

We achieved a lot in a short space of time and I’m sure we will be going back in the near future to hack a bit more off those front bushes! On the way back we threw in a few bursts of speed and everybody coped admirably with the longer distance.

Next week our task is right on the doorstep of our start location as we head to the Royal Pavilion Gardens for some tidying and gardening. Expect a nice big fitness session as well!

And as it will be the 1st Tuesday of the month we will be staying on for a drink for our monthly social.

Tramps like us….Baby we were born to run… up the hill to Exeter Street Hall and give it a jolly good spruce up!

Fans of Bruce Springsteen (I’m a big one, great songs and a social conscience, not to mention those arms!) will know that his band The E Street Band were the inspiration for tonight’s pun. We headed up the hill to Brighton’s very own E Street to continue the good work we did there back in September when we helped them clean up the hall for their grand reopening after some building work. Tonight’s task was continuing the spruce up with some sanding of tables and doors in preparation for varnishing, sweeping up the leaves from the trees outside the hall and applying filler to some nail holes in the wood panelling.

But before we did all that we welcomed Jenny to the group for the first time. Jenny has run a minimum of 1 mile every day so far in 2017, an amazing achievement, give her a cheer! Welcome back also to William who has returned after a few weeks off wth a dodgy knee. We gave Lydia a big cheer as she was the run director at Bevendean Down parkrun on Saturday. Not only did she have to cope with storm Brian there was also all the extra runners who headed out there as all 3 other Brighton park runs were cancelled. Fantastic!

We focussed on technique in the warm up with some heel to toe rockers to fully extend the hips and encourage good, upright running posture. And then we talked about the benefit of shortening the leg lever to make it easier to get a nice quick cadence (steps per minute) and we practiced pulling the foot up under the bum to shorten the leg.

Once we’d got the tables sanded, holes filled and leaves swept we headed back to base via the wonderful Brighton Greenway where we stopped for our fitness session, comprising circuits of plank, tricep dips and jumping jack flies. We headed back to base through the North Laine and whilst we stretched we wished Rose the best of luck for the Beachy Head Marathon she is doing on Saturday. Rather you than me!!

See you next week for our Halloween special to St George’s Hall in Moulsecoomb, but in the meantime enjoy this Bruce classic!