13 GoodGym'ers (not 'unlucky for some'!) ran 3km to get Anchor Gardens in ship shape for summer

With Julia and Nick away on their holidays, the kind where you walk over 30,000 steps a day and then trek across town in desperation of a grape-based reward, I was left in charge of the wonderful GG Worthing group on a beautiful warm and sunny Monday evening.

A bloom with a view

It’s always lovely being back amongst friends with the fresh sea air, and an even bigger bonus for me tonight was that I didn’t have to battle with Southern Rail to get their on time! Instead I had a lovely leisurely run to Splashpoint in which I stopped to admire the amazing flowerbed that has been fabulously crafted by the group, it is a stunning masterpiece and is currently fully in bloom, complete with hand-made GoodGym member figurines! Bloomin' mavellous 🙌🏼

Ready, sweat, go!

Before we headed outside for the warm-up there was the usual chatter and one very very sweaty snowflake who appeared to actually be melting as he had run a scenic 10 miles pre-run...a nice easy warm-up. There was also one very important presentation to be done, with Julia ready and videoed in, I handed Barbara a gift in celebration of her 50th good deed! Inside was another of John’s wonderful handy-work creations, a GoodGym figurine plaque of Barbara herself - check out the photo for this in all its glory!

We’ll pass by the attire of Julia in the call 😉...but tonight there was a sea of red and black GoodGym shirts as everyone was fully kitted out, with Belinda finally able to wear her wings with pride - as they say, you can never have too much of a good wing!

News line is it anyway?!

After a large dose of fun and frivolity we headed outside for a quick run down of the week's news and celebration of all the recent events and running, a lengthy training run for Lucy and Duncan, Barbara's Race for Life, and Belinda and John's Guild Care Walk for Worthing. This week GoodGym is partnered with The Great Get Together, a scheme which was started by Jo Cox's family and friends to bring us more together as communities and celebrate the fact that we all have more in common than we do apart.

As the joggers set off on the run around the pier the rest of the group completed a short pulse-raising warm-up, complete with a phone call from the Queen to congratulate Barbara on her 50th good deed and from Snowflake’s mum to ensure he was behaving* the group successfully tackled some side-to-sides, lunges and the number game whereby I shout numbers the correspond to actions, in this case, 1 = left hand, 2 = right hand, 3 = jump with hands in the air - always an entertaining watch...

Fox office entertainment

With pulses raised we headed off in pursuit of the joggers out and around the pier, as I learned from Gill, recently graced by Will Young! On our run round the pier an incredibly tame fox 🦊 was spotted on the beach foraging amongst the stones. With the group split out those ahead were stopped to complete a wall sit, and then in pairs the satisfying seated glutes stretch.

Gardening by trowel and error

With everyone regrouped we headed off together down the promenade in the lovely evening light. It wasn’t long before we arrived at Anchor Gardens and were greeted by Frieda from the Friends of Anchor Gardens. Frieda explained the weeds and plants that needed removing from the gardening in order to spruce it up! With John and Lucy appearing with the bag of tools and gardening gloves it was time to get to work. Gloved up and armed with a tool of choice the group quickly set to work, with weeds and plants removed by trowel, hoe and shear brute force!

As the group gardened away, I fired off terrible puns at the group and Snowflake ensured he got his weekly dose of relationship advice from the women of the group, much to mine and everyone’s amusement. It seemed the desirables were over 5' 3" and makes cakes, the perfect ingredients for true love?! Well it sounded as though a future date at a GoodGym run was on the cards, so stay tuned for how this romance turns out!

No further broom for improvement!

Half an hour flew by as always ⏰ and GoodGym had worked their magic to transform the garden. Sadly the time had come to tidy away the tools and gardening gloves, and tie up the SIX bags of gardening waste, an impressive haul as ever! The group posed for a team photo amongst the freshly weeded garden bed, armed with the tools as props and the ever popular ‘jazz hands’ 👐.

With the bag of tools, broom 🧹and gloves 🧤 delivered safely back we began our short run back to Splashpoint. Stopping briefly en route for the first of our fitness-based games, a nice and gentle group based number game - those not in a group of the called number had to do a forfeit of 10 jumping jacks.

Back to square fun..."ace"!

Back on the green outside of Splashpoint the evening's fitness fun continued. With the props of tennis balls 🎾, as being as big tennis fan and it being tennis season I couldn't resist! The group split into two teams and began the games of 'plank and run', v-sit twists 'ab fab', and 'over and under'. This was followed by the sprint tennis ball set down and pick-up in which some fantastic pocket-to-sockets sprint techniques were displayed.

One nifty fifty 5️⃣0️⃣

Finally, there was the 'Ode to Barbara' game. Four multiple-choice questions all based on the wonderful Barbara. With 10x spotty dogs, squats, press-ups, burpees the forfeit for choosing the incorrect answer. We learnt the following facts about Barbara...

• She has been cheered 441 times since she began GoodGym
• She has given a whooping 1902 cheers this year
• She has run 409.31km this year
• In Scrabble, the word 'Fifty' scores higher than 'Barbara' - 14 to 11!
  

Plank you very much, that's ball folks!

With running, task and fitness session completed all that was left to do was to have a good stretch off before saying our goodbyes and heading home, some via a run to keep their June challenge on track, excellent effort all!

Next week Julia will be back and you’ll be heading to St Botolph's Church ⛪, this will be followed by the BIG bubble celebrations for Barbara’s fiftieth 🥳 (good deed not birthday!). Please sign up here. Have a lovely week, good luck in parkruns and any races at the weekend. Thank you for having for me, it was an absolute pleasure, see you again soon!

*well this is who I assume was on the call...