We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us. Jo Cox.

This week Goodgym are partnering with the Great Get Together to celebrate kindness, respect and all we have in common. What a great legacy for the wonderful woman and MP that was Jo Cox, who was sadly murdered 3 years ago this week.

So what united the 8 people who turned up for Brighton Goodgym last night? Well apart from a desire to get fit and do good, I’d say the foresight to not let a bad weather forecast get in the way of a good run! 70% chance of rain they said, but we got lucky and 30% won the day with a muggy but dry evening.

One of the great things about taking part in Goodgym is that you get to discover many of the wonderful, small charities that are operating in the city. Last night we visited for the first time Pelican Parcels, a small charity, started 6 months ago by Shelley, to help connect donated baby items with needy families. Shelley and her team work hard every week to sort out the donated items and put them together into parcels to be sent to their new homes, but there are always tasks that never make it to the top of the to do list and that’s where we can help. So last night we cleaned the windows and shop /office front, vacuumed the office, emptied the vacuum cleaner, sorted through bags of donated clothes, took stained clothes to the recycling bin and gave seven buggies a really good scrub so they are ready to go to their new homes. Helena also introduced us to Duggee after finding a donated toy, it seems the rave generation have grown up and are now in charge of children's entertainment!

Shelley was delighted with what we achieved and emailed her thanks

Just wanted to say thank you again - what a lovely group of people! So happy to have a clean window, clean buggies, clean carpet and a good amount of sorting completed.

Task complete we headed to the seafront to see how many burpees, press-ups and sit ups you could do in just 10 seconds. That number then became your target for an EMOM (every minute on the minute) for 9 minutes with Sherman deeply regretting those initial 11(!) press ups by round 5!

I really hope to see you at The Weakest Link tonight (Wednesday), all are welcome, don’t worry about being divisible by 4 as it always works out that there will be spare runners from other groups.

Now, how do I get 'sticky, sticky, stick, stick' out of my head?!!

Just about a year ago Nipun moved to Brighton and rightly identified Goodgym as a great way to get to know people, get fit, do good and discover the wonderful city we live in. 36 good deeds and 12 months later, Nipun has become a much loved part of Brighton Goodgym, even being promoted to the dizzy heights of ‘social secretary’. And in her final task in the role she organised her own leaving do where we broke all records with an amazing 18 people staying on to say farewell. Nipun’s career as social secretary has not been entirely plain sailing. Although she does seem to have a great skill of seeking out Brighton’s coolest places to eat and drink she also seems to have an uncanny ability to book places where the chef has already gone home! So tonight 'Ohso Social’ were ‘OhSo sorry’ they missed our booking and sent the chef home early, but it didn’t put any dampers on the evening as we went somewhere else, forgotten the name already!

But before all the social stuff we were delighted to be joined by Laura and Julian for the first time, and also to break 20 good deeders for the first time since early January. Cllr David Gibson was well prepared and deployed most of the group around the ward of Hanover & Elm Grove to paint and spray over graffiti on walls, bins & junction boxes. Our previous painting tasks have been incredibly effective at reducing the amount of scribbling in the area so mostly it was applying the top coat to our previous efforts.

Meanwhile the rest of the group were tasked with litter picking and weeding the planted area in front of the Percy Wagner Almshouses. Again we have made a huge difference here over the year or so we have been coming with the amount of litter greatly reduced so our main effort was on tackling the jungle of bindweed. We pulled the stuff out by the arm full hopefully giving the shrubs underneath a chance to breathe and grow strong through the summer.

Tonight's fitness session took a bit of explaining but we got there in the end! An assembly line of partnered exercises using each other to jump over, dip from and provide resistance.

Just a reminder about The Weakest Link next Wednesday. Full details here, I highly recommend it as a fun night of running and mingling with Brighton’s runners.

So farewell Nipun, it's been great to have you and your positive energy around for the last year. Good luck with your new job and all the best with Goodgym Richmond. Hopefully we'll see you at a social event or race before too long. Oh and anyone want to be our new Social Secretary??!!

Twelve of us met up on another fine evening and headed towards Hanover and Elm Grove to meet the newly re-elected Councillor David Gibson.

Our destination was Barclay House where David met us along with some of the local residents.

As usual David had a myriad of tasks set up for us and while a core group of us stayed there,a selection of sub groups went off to various locations to do other work.

Paul and Madeleine embarked on painting over some pesky tagging, Michael and Rosemary hit May Road and weeded away while Amro and Juliet arrived at Seville Road and cleared ivy.

Back at base the rest of us cleared beds of ivy and weeds and lopped off branches and tangled roots while the local residents gave us plenty of encouragement and enquired about car boot sales!!!

Once finished we jogged to the Level and ran level laps...precisely 800m. Hard work but good training.

We then went back during which time Tara told us she'd beaten the course record for the Seaford park run the previous Saturday. Well done Tara!!!

This week yours truly covered the run while Tara and Helena are off enjoying a running holiday (running holiday, two words many would not put together!).

First off we gave a huge congratulations to Frannie for becoming just the fifth member of the 50 club at Brighton Goodgym. Despiting a long work commute she has still found time to pack in all those Good deeds, so there is no excuse for those of you more local! Achieving 50 means Frannie has been to exactly 50% of our Brighton group runs as this was our 100th Brighton group run! That's a lot of good deeds and hopefully communities helped in less than two years!

In the continued absence of our usual warm up spot we did some more stationary exercises before setting off into the glorious evening sun along the busy seafront. Weaving in and out of everyone enjoying the end of the day we covered the 3kms to the task in good time despite the warm weather.

Tonight we were helping Scope in their Hove Charity Shop. There were lots of fresh (and some not so fresh) bags of clothing to sort through to find the gems for the shop to sell. With Madelene and Sherman preparing the clothes for hanging everyone else set to sorting through the bags of clothes. It's amazing the things people donate to be sold, single socks with holes in, paint spattered clothes and plenty of underwear! None the less we made light work of it all and found some pretty good stuff in amongst the rubbish.

The task owner Heather said:

The help we give makes such a big difference despite the short time, she struggles for volunteers and with our sorting it means when she does get help they can get straight to sorting out the shop ready for selling!

We incorporated the fitness session into the run back doing some interval training between the lamp posts along Hove Promenade. There was a lot of good effort put in considering the warm weather and that a lot of people had not covered that distance for a while so well done to everyone.

Thanks to Sherman and Amro for helping out with photos and back marking and to everyone else for putting up with me this week, I'm off for a rest now see you next week!