We had two tasks for the good folk of Brighton Goodgym tonight. Whilst half of us were weeding at the Salvation Army the rest went back to Off the Fence to finish the painting of the front wall in a yellowish shade of white!

Huge apologies to new runners Amza, Charlotte & Helen as I rudely forgot to welcome you to the group and also welcome back to Scott who joined us for the first time since our epic launch way back in July. We shared the good news that Rachael S and Helena have both now been coach verified and very quickly paired with their new coaches who they are meeting later this week. I believe these are the first of hopefully many pairings for Brighton Goodgym and I look forward to hearing all about it.

Helena took you all off around the fountain for our warm up. Meanwhile there was some high drama as Jonathan had lost his phone on the way to Goodgym, but when Lydia called it they realised it had been picked up by the good people at Shabitat! So off they headed to pick it up and made it back to the group for the task. Dedication!

Helena then led 6 intrepid runners up the big Dyke Road hill back to Off the Fence’s intern house. Off the Fence are a great charity that do work with the homeless, vulnerable women and schools. We’d started a painting task for them 4 weeks ago and had planned to return 2 weeks ago to finish the job. But we were put off by a rainy weather forecast and decided not to go and then, would you believe it it, it didn’t rain! Tonight the forecast was definitely dry but, would you believe it, some rain did fall! Thankfully not enough to spoil the painting and a fine job was done on the front wall, window ledges and rear hand rail.

The rest of the group headed to The Salvation Army to sort out their garden. We were met by Lin who told us about the fantastic work they do feeding the homeless (90 people every Wednesday!) and other community groups. We focussed on the hedges that were overgrowing onto the path where Scott, Beth & Juliet did an amazing job of cutting back. Everybody else did some sterling work on unraveling the mess of bindweed and brambles in the main bed in front of the church. We had been asked to concentrate on this area as it provided a dark and sheltered corner for drug users and we’d been warned to watch out for needles. But no needles were found just a champagne cork! We bagged up so many bags of weeds and cuttings, all that you see in the photo plus 4 more! It was all very satisfying and Lin was amazed by how much we got done. But there is more to do so we will be back!

We headed to the Level for a 5 minute AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) of 10 x squats, 8 x jumping jacks, 6 x sit ups, 4 x press ups & 2 x burpees. Even though I gave the option of working in pairs nobody took it and you all smashed out loads of rounds with Jonathan doing a cracking 8 or 9! And just as we finished Helena’s group arrived so we all headed back to base together.

During the stretches I reminded you that we will doing a parkrun on the second Saturday of the month starting on September 9th at Preston Park. Wear your red t-shirts so we can spread the word and hopefully get us some new recruits to do even more good in Brighton!

Scores on the doors were 5.5km in 35 minutes for the Off the Fencers and 3km in 20 minutes for the Salvation Army.