There aren’t many rainy Tuesday evenings but the ones we get do seem to coincide with our visits to the Hillview Good News Centre!

Way back in December we applied the first coat of paint to their outside wall and tonight was our third visit to attempt to apply coat two. But yet again the weather was against us and rain stopped paint! But as always community workers Sean and Fay came up with a great alternative so there was still good to be done at the end of our run!

But first in tonight’s news we congratulated Helena on winning a bronze County medal at the Sussex road relays on Saturday and we all admired Roy’s new half marathon PB set in Istanbul at the weekend. Big ups also went to Amro, Paul, Rosemary & me who all completed missions this week. I certainly enjoyed mine, when alongside Amro we overcame a series of technical challenges to mow Mrs D’s lawn, and thoroughly recommend people to get involved with this aspect of Goodgym.

Back to tonight and a rainy, slightly uphill 4.5 km took us to the north of town where our task was twofold:-

1. to prepare the community centre for a Chomp session tomorrow by laying out lots of tables and chairs and giving the centre a general clean.
2. to move a pile of reclaimed wood that will eventually be used by a The Good News Shed group to make various items to sell at fairs, fix fences etc.

Task complete, we enjoyed a slightly faster, downhill return journey before heading off for beer and pizza for our monthly social. Well done to all for coping with the longer distance tonight.

Don’t forget it’s our monthly parkrun meet up at East Brighton on Saturday and then the big one on Sunday when Brighton hosts its 10th marathon. Best of luck to all running, volunteering or supporting.

Until next week...

The Bad News? It rained and we couldn’t do our planned task of painting the outside wall. The Good News? Task owners Sean & Fay came up with another great task which we enjoyed very mulch!

So for the second time our planned task at the Good news community centre got rained off, so instead of painting the wall we were re-tasked with clearing a paved walkway to the boiler cupboard which had become somewhat overgrown with brambles and leaves forming quite a slippery mulch and a potential slip hazard for the boiler man!

Sean & Fay were as organised as usual and had a range of cutting, sweeping, shovelling and scooping tools for us to clear the brambles and leaf mulch to reveal the path underneath.

With more than 4km to run in each direction time was short but we worked hard and got the job done in about 20 minutes. It’s jobs like this that tend to get pushed down the bottom of the list and Sean reckoned it would have taken him half a day on his own so was very pleased with what we achieved.

Extra kudos to Abi tonight who wasn’t sure if she’d be able to go the distance but by the end barely looked like she’d got started!

It’s our parkrun meet up on Saturday at East Brighton and our monthly social next week after the group run. Hope to see you at one or both.

On yet another cold Tuesday night a dedicated team of hardcore goodgymers ran one of our longer runs that we do, to the edge of mousclecomb and back once again to help the good volunteers at the Good News Centre at the hillview centre in Mousclecomb. (first right after the primary school) We congratulated Michael, Helena, David, Roy & Tara (and Tabitha who was having a night off) on their completion and good day had at the maverick event series race in Amberely last weekend as one of the top 10 races in the UK and 3 rd hardest within goodgym, with Tara being gracefull and not mentioning that she came first on the longer 14mile format of the race. With these good chills running down our backs, we set off from our base at the YHA Brighton at the Old Steine in two tiers of abilities into the night with Michael leading and tara as back- marker, full of steam all the way up Lewes road at a good steady and constant pace from some of our faster runners! Where Helena & Frances met us at the centre alongwith a fire engine….!? ALL WAS WELL! Turned out to be nothing serious as they probably also thought that there must have been a fast moving fire coming up the hill somehow from all the last minutue fumes that were coming from atop of our runners heads on a last minute dash effort up the rather steep incline of a hill before getting to the halveway point of 4.5km at the centre. Where we then met sometimes goodgymer Sean and his other community centre leaders and decided that finishing off our white wall would have been pointless due to the rain washing it off later but the murial looks fabulous and he introduced the centre’s ethos and its purpose as a community hub and charity base run building which gets only a sprinkle of funding help from the council so they encourage the community to run workshops from it and lend a hand where they can aswell as giving donations which are re-distributed back into supermarkets and generally gradually giving the whole place a big makeover so that it can have more function rooms and become evenmore of a man-cave than it already is, as an all- round ‘’good news’’ (please excuse the second cheesy pun!) opportunity aswell as centre for the community, running other courses and drop-ins for anyone as friendly individuals. Helena, Frances & Angela got stuck right into the centre’s main utility cupboard and pretty much cleaned up shop, giving it the full works with a mop, organise & dust with Sean. The rest of our brighton team decided to become wiping wizards and piled into the centre’s kitchen with our yellow gloves a-ready, as what ended up happening was complete wiiizaarddyyy I do say dear boys and girls! Date checking all the cularinary/grocery items, disinfecting and wiping down all of thier halve a dozen cupboards and surfaces & even sofia spending extra time wiping out the fridge. Sean was once again overwhelmed at our efforts and thanked us greatly for helping him get the centre ready and sparkly, in-time for their health & safety regulators check as he wants to pass, before we were getting ready to head back out into typical british weather for the second halve of our haul, we put provisional dates in the diary for another visit back to the centre in good due time to finish the murial and kitchen there (our fingers are crossed for him and we wish him the best!) The hardcore team trojoned on chatting away back down lewes road, with mid-run loop reps from our elite where we’d double-back on ourselves between two set points by tara, allowing for high interval sprints to be had, before we hit the rush of the city again, for the last 4.5km back to the YHA for warmth and cool water that always awaits us there  with some peeling off on-route back to their respectitive homes as its closer for them, massive effort and performance from all was had, with the faster runners steaming ahead and myself keeping back mark as no-one gets left behind at goodgym as we look after eachother here! We managed to finish before the first of our winter snow sleet hit us tonight though and goodgym brighton is heading back to the hove promenarde next Tuesday at 18:15 from the YHA Brighton, (where we meet round to the right of the reception and is a room that gets locked by the staff there, to put away any heavier valuables etc you may have) to meet the groundsman, collect spades and buckets and sweep up the peebles from the parkrun route area so that people can run along the beach on Saturdays as the intensity of the waves pushes a vast amount (probably more than you think) of pebbles right up onto the promenarde. Keep up all the Running and hard work you’re all putting in, as its having a massive impact to the community & is all counting towards Brighton Goodgym’s janaury deed & distance challenge,competing with other cities! Hope to see you on another run, Regards your newly velged brighton taskforce member Damian!

On a dark Tuesday night in December 15 Brighton Goodgymers combined their evening run with some doing good and headed into the depths of Moulsecoomb to help The Good News Community Group at the Hillview Centre.

A couple of weeks ago James joined us for his first run and enjoyed it so much this week he bought along not one but two brothers! A big Brighton Goodgym welcome to Alex & Robb.

In the news…. we congratulated Paul for doing a mission at the weekend, it’s really great to see more of these being done in the past few weeks. We also reminded all that its our Christmas party this very Thursday, aka tomorrow, and I forgot to remind you it’s our parkrun meet up at Preston Park on Saturday.

One of our longer runs of 4.5 km each way tonight but that didn’t seem to phase anyone once we’d got past my mental muddle about the difference between the London & Lewes Road! A stinker of a hill to finish and we were met by sometime Goodgymer & community leader Sean.

There’s a lot going on at the Good News Hillview Centre including family group sessions, coffee mornings and & a Men in Sheds group. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the building they’re working out of is past its prime, but Sean & his team have done a great job of keeping it functional and cheerful. One of the things they plan to do is to refresh the mural on the front wall so our main task tonight was to whitewash over the old one. Other jobs included weeding the area in front of the wall and cleaning the well used kitchen. As we were limited on time due to the length of the run I didn’t think we’d have time to complete the wall but you guys pulled out wall the stops (!) to get it done in around 20 minutes.

Sean and team were delighted that we got the job done and now they have a blank canvas to complete their project. Sean also let me know that The Bevy are having a Christmas Carol singalong at 4pm on Sunday 16th December so if you find yourself free and in that part of town pop in.

As we headed back, most of you peeled off to head straight back to your homes, and as the last remaining runners were nearly back at base the rain that had been threatening all night burst forth and hopefully didn’t wash all the paint off!

See you next week when we're back in the Hanover Elm Grove ward. We've had a cancellation on our last task before the break on December 18th, I am doing my best to find a replacement but if any one has any ideas for a Christmas task then let me know!