Lessons learnt today: 1. Always check the event listing before you head off to a community event 2. Never ask Tony how far away something is - his standard "about 3 miles" isn't always right

When I headed out of my door this morning to run down the Eastern Road footpath I knew there was a pretty good chance that I would be the only GoodGym representative at the SSUK / Final Straw beach clean as no-one else had signed up to this particular community mission. What I hadn't anticipated was that I would be the only person there! They had canceled the event on Saturday and I had missed the post on Facebook - it must've got lost amongst all those "useful" targeted adverts and photos of fireworks!

The run down to the RNLI station was really nice, a little warmer than I'd dressed for with a bit of a breeze, so you will see from the photo that my face was trying to match my T-shirt and my hair was more wild than usual! As the tide was nearly at its highest point and I'd decided to go the route of the Portsmouth marathon / half marathon there was a part of the run that involved a bit of balance and co-ordination, or scrambling over rocks and trying to avoid an angry swan! All in all, a pretty fun 4 miles.

As I'd planned my run to be 3 ish miles (see lesson 2 above) I got to the sailing club / lifeboat station just after 10. Looked around, couldn't see anyone... weird. Thought I'd check Facebook for the exact location in case I was in the wrong place and that's when I saw the post about the clean being canceled. As I was wearing the GG T-shirt and had brought my gloves in my bag I decided to do a #2minutebeachclean instead. In an area of about 3 square metres I found LOADS of litter including a handy bin bag to put it all into. There is a lot of discarded rubbish and bits of plastic down there so a community mission for the future I think.

I ran home a slightly different way to take my total distance to 8 miles. It was a lovely morning for a run and to be down on the beach. To be honest, I wouldn't have done that distance had I not been going to the community mission so it was definitely not time wasted! Always good to have a reason to run.... got to love GoodGym for that.

Look out for an Eastney beach clean community mission coming up in the next few weeks....

Happy Sunday everyone!