It is that time of the year when our friend Stuart from the Friends of Palmeira and Adelaide reaches GoodGym Brighton for some Autumnal conservation of the community green spaces in Palmeira Square. Despite the chill air temperatures of this week Tuesday evening, 10 brave heart GoodGymers cycled and run to our weekly task, where Stuart, the lead gardener Janet, and the lovely chairman, welcomed us with garden tools ready for some speedy (and warming up) raking action in the outdoors.

Have you ever raked wet leaves from a city park? Like (or even better than) exercising with a Power Tower Gym – Rachel’s quote, enabling you to perform functional exercises that are the most efficient and effective training regimen out there. With this powerful piece of equipment, you would be able to perform 4 major kinds of workouts, namely, Chin-ups, Press-ups, Dips and Vertical Knee Raises.

We managed to rake 4 big bags of green waste, 2 tons plus of minus, which will be collated in the new composting area enabling to recycle food and green waste separately, to close the cycle and produce lovely compost to regenerate new grass for the park next spring.

We welcomed returning new members Amy and Dagdas, and lovely Sarah who is commuting every week from PeaceHaven to what has now become her regular weekly appointment with GoodGym! Tell your friends WHAT's ON](https://www.goodgym.org/v3/areas/brighton/sessions) at GoodGym Brighton.

What a difference a week makes!

In a massive contrast with last week's wind and rain we were treated to a glorious spring evening for the last Wednesday before the clocks go forward.

Meeting outside the Iffley Road Sports Centre - site of Roger Bannister's original sub-4 minute mile - on what serendipitously turned out to be Roger Bannister's birthday, we split off into walking and running groups.

Lead by Katie, the walkers set off for a bucolic loop of Aston's Eyot, complete with deer sightings and a beautiful sunset.

Meanwhile the runners were put through their paces by Bethan and Ben - our amazing new Run Leaders. Dodging fellow track users we completed a warm up loosely modelled on a Junior parkrun warmup (if it's good enough for a 5 year old it's good enough for me...) then split the group down the middle for the main session. Ben's group completed a pyramid efforts session; gradually increasing the effort distance and decreasing the recovery distance then working back down to the original distances. Meanwhile Bethan's group took on sets of 300m efforts with 100m walk/jog recovery intervals.

Suitably sweaty we managed to all finish at roughly the same time, which is one of the major benefits of running on the track - everyone can work to their own effort level. With a mixture of experienced and less experienced runners, people who haven't been able to run for a few weeks etc, running around in circles is a great way to keep the group together.

With perfect timing we exited the sports centre just as the walkers got back and all headed up the footpath for a few drinks at The Oxford Blue.

This was Amy's last session before moving to Cambridge, where shockingly there is no GoodGym! Good luck Amy!