While Julia and Nick were off on their holidays in sunny Spain I had the pleasure of leading 10 fantastic GoodGym-ers on a beautiful Monday evening down in Costa del Worthing. It was lovely to welcome along new runner Ed to his first GoodGym group run, and great to see some new and old faces waiting for me at Splashpoint (although they were waiting, shock horror I wasn’t that late!).

Before we headed outside there was the normal friendly chatter and catch-ups and I reminded everyone about the GoodGym Worthing parkrun takeover on Saturday 27th October – speak to Belinda if you haven’t yet been allocated a role (if you’d like one), what an awesome sea of red Worthing parkrun will be on this day! Following a quick warm-up around me and a name and number count which seemed to perplex a few, as Tamsin exclaimed later in the session “she’s gone all London!” we headed off on our extended 3km run to the Sydney Walter Centre with Belinda assigned the role as my trusty back-marker. Since it was such a beautiful evening with the sun setting as we ran, I couldn’t resist the out and around the pier warm-up, plus it looks great on Strava!

The speedier ones of the group were delighted when I suggested some wall sits while we waited for the group to come together again and even more delighted when I then mentioned squats while we were waiting at a road junction further on. Disclaimer 1: Julia did not have a camera attached to me!.

When we arrived at the Sidney Walter Centre we were greeted by the lovely Claire and Lisa of Breathing Spaces and by the super smiley Barbara. Claire and Lisa explained to the group how Breathing Spaces provide year-round assisted gardening for people living with dementia and other support needs and within Worthing have a couple of community gardens and an allotment for which they run their clubs – many of which GoodGym have helped on in the past!

Memories made in the dementia garden…

Tonight we were going to be working in the dementia-friendly ‘mind and memory garden’ and the tasks that they needed our help with were:

1. Clearing the wood from their shed
2. Unscrew the wooden desks inside the shed and move them outside
3. Some weeding and watering around the garden

A reliable chain line…with no complaints of upper back chain!

The group quickly piled into the shed and began moving the wood from inside to out. However, due to the tight space this involved a lot of weaving and a few bumps into each other until the words “human chain” were heard. Like clockwork the group moved into position and formed a wonderful human chain that efficiently moved all the wood in double quick time – even the microscopic pieces of wood (not an exaggeration!) were seen moving up the chain until Duncan declared it “ridiculous” and deemed it ground not pile-worthy.

Couldn’t have shed it better!

With all the wood moved outside, Ed, Jay and Duncan began their battle with the screwed-in wooden desks inside the shed. Amongst lots of talk about tight screws, screw plugs and with the odd tugs on the desks to ‘gently loosen them’ the boys soon made in-roads and won their battle to get the desks unscrewed from the wall and removed from the shed.

Some weedy good work

With the boys occupied inside the shed, the girls split off into two groups: Gill and Marian picked up the watering cans and began watering all the plants, which included some rather healthy looking tomato plants and the dream weeding team of Belinda, Sue, Tamsin, Barbara and Anne tended to the flowerbeds, unwanted weeds and moss on the pavement outside.

The bench mark of a job well done

As always time flew by, and with all but one of the wooden benches unscrewed from the wall and moved out of the shed, and all the plants watered we called it a day. The group, minus Jay who had to leave for rehydration reasons (aka the pub) posed on the bench under the mind and memory garden plaque and humoured my selfie attempts.

We said our thankyous and goodbyes to Claire and Lisa before heading off on our run back to Splashpoint via the long route through Homefield Park and Beach House Park.

Pulling out all the shots

For the fitness session tonight there were two shot based games. Disclaimer 2: no alcohol was involved, despite the suspicious number of times Ed fell! First up was a sprint technique based shot game, 2 teams, 1 pile of shot glasses all numbered 1-7 a 20 metre sprint away. The aim was to sprint to the pile focusing on your ALPS and 'pockets to sockets' and collect all the numbers 1-7 (not 1, 2 and 7!) from the shot glass pile. When a shot glass was collected the team had do an exercise of the sprinters choosing before the next person could sprint to the pile. It was a very close competition, with Ed not learning after his first sprint that “the grass is slightly damp, you need to watch your footing” and consequently displaying a few well-styled out slides. For Team Two it was ‘shot to be’ and the winners by a small shot were Team One!

Squatshots

Next up was a two minute game of ‘squatshot’. Team One (Team Down) v Team Two (Team Up). 29 red plastic shot glasses. Some interesting tactics and battles occurred with shot glasses quickly being up then down or vice versa (and the odd slip and slide thrown in). All round it was a highly competitive game which ended up with many on their backsides, but ultimately was another Team One (Team Down) victory. Awesome shot work all!

Forget me shot!

With the fitness games completed we had a quick cool down and stretch, with Tamsin completing some additional burpees to ensure she got her burpee fix for the night, weirdly no-one joined her with these?! Stretching complete and with the sun almost set, it was time to say our goodbyes for another week. Thank you for company and all your hard work today guys, I really miss my Monday evenings down in Worthing with you all! Another fun evening! Best of luck to Barbara who is running for the wonderful charity Cancer United at the Great North Run on Sunday and to Marian in the Manchester 10K next month.

Well done to Duncan and Lucy for conquering Mt. Kilimanjaro last month, AND, fabulous to see that Tamsin has committed to the red GG tee, I may have jokingly asked once about whether she had committed yet, in a non-questioning/judging way…in all seriousness, it’s absolutely lovely to have you as part of the group, Tamsin, always smiling and wonderfully kind and friendly, with one very cute mini-me who we hope recovers quickly from her broken arm!

Julia is back next week and the task is “Bugcycle Garden” in Beach House Park – one of my favourite tasks! Sign-up here. Have a good run and see you all soon!