After the biggest weekend in Brighton’s running calendar the big news tonight was all about the fantastic achievements of our regular runners in the Brighton marathon. Massive congratulations to Sherman who not only finished the marathon on Sunday he made it to our group run just 2 days later! And also congratulations to Worthing & Brighton regular Beth who finished in a cracking time of 3.55 on her first attempt!

Thanks to a break in Brighton’s darts league we welcomed back Sean for the second time and Ashley for his first. Big kudos to Ashley for completing the distance and for keeping smiling throughout! We hope to see you both again soon.

Tonight’s task was back to the somewhat overgrown area at the front of the almshouses we visited a few weeks ago. Although we’d picked up masses of bottles and beer cans on our previous visit there were plenty more that had either been added or were just buried deep under the undergrowth. The vegetation has clearly been providing cover for some nefarious activities judging by the litter we uncovered! Let’s just say I’ll be putting all those gloves through on a hot wash!

After much litter picking and some hard pruning the area looked loads better and much more light and open which will hopefully discourage those nefarious activities and make it more pleasant for the residents of the almshouses.

We headed to the Level for a quick game of team tic-tac-toe aka noughts and crosses, which was nail biting stuff being so close between the reds and greens with finally the winning team being….I’ve forgotten already!!

Great work tonight guys, I know it wasn’t the most pleasant of tasks but we have hopefully shed a little light onto a shady spot and the world is ever so slightly better than it was before!

See you next week for another go at those railings!

Tonight the weather started out as the warmest of the year and we warmly welcomed Andrea to the group for the first time. We congratulated Louise on completing the Paris marathon on Saturday, (give her a cheer!) and looked ahead to this weekend when its the best day of the year, the Brighton Marathon. I urge you all to go and watch it and cheer on the runners, particularly our very own Sherman, Beth, Rachael, David & Cal. Good luck to you all, you will have an amazing day!

Things got even warmer as we ran up the hill to SloaneCourt which is a senior housing scheme for the over 55s. We were met by resident Anthony who has lots of plans for the huge gardens, including a hedgehog hotel (can’t wait to help on that one!), but for now our task was threefold

1. planting bulbs in the raised beds
2. digging over a bed that we’d previously cleared and planting some lavender
3. removing some large shrubs and roots from another bed and planting it with some shrubs that had not been thriving in patio pots

Anthony was chuffed to bits and said it would have taken him days to achieve what we did in just half an hour. I’m sure we’ll be back for a few more visits over the summer and I can’t wait to see this garden progress and help Anthony achieve his vision.

By the time we’d finished the warm weather had turned to totally un-forecasted rain just in time to keep you cool on the fitness session. We headed to Queens Park for some laps of the lake (Chloe assured me she was a trained lifeguard and would rescue any one who fell in!) and some squats, press ups lunges etc…

A few of us went on to the Mesmerist for a drink and a bite to eat and Roy came up with the pun (what would I do without you?!)

See you on Saturday for our parkrun meet up at Bevendean Down and breakfast at the Bevy after and next week’s group run takes us back to the Percy & Wagner almshouses.