Saturday saw us join up with Naomi House to support them for their Bubble Rush fun run this morning on Southsea Common and our first community mission of the day. We were asked to help with the race warm up, bubble station marshals and handing out medals and water to the finishers.

Warming up the crowd

The race had two waves and our Goodgym Trainer Katie was leading the warmup and had her music and steps all planned, all she needed were some ‘able’ volunteers to assist with the warm up moves on stage. Angela and Jo volunteered and were given an overview of the steps so that we would look like we knew what we were doing. Thankfully nothing was too complicated and no grape vines were needed on stage. There were some high heart rates from Angela and Jo prior to the warmup not through the exercises but though fear and excitement. Prior to each warm up Katie told the crowd what Goodgym was all about and ensured that the runners were all having fun before starting our routine. We soon all relaxed into it and enjoyed performing the warmup whilst watching the crowd join in and warmup before heading over to the start.

Deeper shade of blue

Once the runners were off, Judy, Rachel fresh from her Parkrun PB and Rosie manned the ‘Don’t be Blue’ bubble station. As you will see from the photos this was an archway of blue foam that the runners would walk, run, crawl or commando roll through depending on how blue they wanted to be. Rachel and Rosie were ‘arch support’ as the archway kept blowing and going low so they would have to keep holding this up to allow the runners through. Judy had to head into the blue foam to retrieve someone’s sunglasses and everyone received a lot of blue bubble hugs. Rosie helped rescued a few children from the foam who were having too much fun so they could be reunited with their parents who stayed outside of the blue.

Jen and Tracey headed towards the finish line to get the medals ready for the runners who would soon be coming through the finish line and were ready and waiting to hand out the medals to the finishers along with receiving lots of foamy hugs as they crossed the line. Katie, Angela and Jo headed to the finish line after warming up the crowds to assist with medals and water and also received some foamy hugs.

All runners finished covered in foam but had smiles on their faces, very few had their white t-shirts as white as they were when they started. Rosie and Rachel got into the spirit of Bubble Rush and were a lovely shade of blue from the knees down. Let’s hope Rosie’s feet aren’t as blue as her photos by Wednesday when we're helping out at Naomi House charity shop.