Beaver Moon

What a stunning evening it was at GG Worthing tonight. It was our coldest night since last winter but with just 24 hours to go before the full beaver moon the view over the sea was really very special with the moon reflecting beautifully over the sea.

With a fair few apologies for absence together with Mr and Mrs R being on holiday I was very pleased to welcome 10 hardy GG participants including Sue, Barbara, Ricky, Lucy, Paul, Ros, Nick . It was also really good to welcome back second timer Paul in his new red t shirt who shared with us that he loved last week but could hardly walk for 4 days afterwards! Kudos Paul and thanks for returning for more :)

Ready, steady, grow

This evening we split into two groups. One group were planting up a specially chosen selection of red bulbs ready for some spring colour to ( hopefully) burst out of the GG flowerbed around March next year whilst the other group were tasked with a quick weed and tidy of Anchor Gardens in support of the 'friends of' residents association.

Nick armed with tools and bulbs lead the fabulous 4 ( Lucy, Paul and Ricky) to the flowerbed. This soon became the infamous 5 when Jay made an unexpected appearance on the scene. Runners took a quick detour around the pier whilst Nick prepped the soil ready for planting.

800 metres east of the flowerbed team the rest of us ( Barbara, Ros, Paul and Sue) took a gentle warm up run along the seafront admiring the moon before getting down to the business of weeding the garden . With the help of Uncle Ivo's lights this became much easier. I did comment that I'm not sure how we ever managed without them !

We were soon joined by the rest of the team and , surprise, surprise Dr Emma who spotted us as she was driving back to her new home in Brighton.

Barmy about burpees.

It didn't take long for Lucy to lead the daily prescription of 50 burpees. With Jay, Sue, Ricky and even Dr Emma dropping down for a taste of the daily dose things turned just a little bit crazy for a while! With the remainder of the team finishing up the task and a few feeling more than a little bit chilly we packed up and set of on a steady run to one of the only hills I could find in the close proximity of Worthing for some hill sprints.

Hill areas pun for some sprint fun

So it wasn't the most scenic or pretty location but hey its not easy to find pretty hills locally :) The team smashed out plus or minus 8 sprints to the top of the hill followed by recovery functional moves including squats, lunges , calf raises and tricep and chest press ups. This was Q U A L I T Y training and not for the faint hearted. Nice work team!

The team finished with a steady run back to base where we stretched whilst I previewed next weeks cooking tasks with Turning Tides.

In other news

• We have our first carol singing booking at The Recovery Project on 16th December. Any volunteers for helping with the play list would be gratefully received!
• We still need a task for 9th December as The Rowans have rescheduled so if anyone knows of a worthy cause please let me know.
• The daily burpee challenge is now at 50 per day. It moves to 75 this Friday :)

have a great week everyone and see you all next week,

Julia :)

Calm after the storm ( the normal weather bulletin)

How lucky were we this evening ? After a armageddon type storm on Saturday and a bleak rain filled Monday we were all expecting to get very wet again this evening but, in reality,we only had a few refreshing drops fall on us until after we finished when it fell down again.

We were delighted to welcome Paul tonight who joined us for the first time. Hopefully this will be the first of many! It was great to have you come along tonight :)

Ricky also joined us for his second run and good deed. Added to these newbies were my amazing core team comprising , in no order of importance, Belinda and John, Barbara,Paul Sue, Anne, Paula,Lucy and Emily together with one more VIP.

Nifty fitty fifty

It was an epic night for our very own Tamsin who joined GoodGym just under 2 years ago when she came along with friend and colleague Paul What better way to celebrate with this wonderful, funny and endearing GG member than by a testimonial in her own words.

*So tonight, almost two years after joining GoodGym Worthing I completed my 50th task 😀

Having joined this group at a particularly low point I had no real expectations other than feeling like I needed to do something physical to feel mentally stronger and to have two hours a week where I was off solo parenting duty!

I’ve gained not only (a bit of) fitness, but more importantly great fun with this group of people who I now count as my friends ❤️

Thank you goodgymers for my 50 photo montage, for welcoming my little Jemmie along when needed, and for all the burpees and laughs 😉😂*

Cant wait to see you rocking the little black t shirt Tams and pushing towards your angel wings!

No kidding around

This evening we were helping out our local rangers at the children's playground just near the parkrun turn round point on the seafront.

We were ( kind of ) joyously greeted by our friendly park ranger Keith who it was great to catch up with as we hadn't seen him for months ( think he's been hiding from us! )

Keith outlined that our sole task tonight was to shovel up all the sand from the path around the playground and get it back into the sand pits together with sweeping up as much as possible to make it look spick and span ( with hardly any sand!)

I think we were all delighted that calmness had prevailed,especially after the recent extreme weather, for this task and, dare I say that it was almost a balmy feel under the moonlit sky.

Talking of which, with Natacha on detention at school and unable to make the task, John wasted no time in replacing his favourite french mademoiselle and posed for another 'oooh la la moment' with Lucy

Fear not Natasha ! He can manage 'deux a la fois' :)

Ships ahoy

30 short minutes later the team down tooled. Doing a fine impersonation of Rose from the Titanic, Tams pulled off a great 50th task photo on the pirate ship to seal the good deed.

After the usual level of negotiation, function fitness drills followed that were tailored to improving running technique. These included 5 rounds of walking lunges, standing squat jumps, high knee runs and burpees. This nicely wrapped up todays quota of the 25 burpees a day November challenge.

However this was not the end of tonights fitness focus. Following my fitness email last week about tempo running the team did 3 tempo effort runs focusing on 85% effort over each 1 km distance.

Special mention to Sue who achieved an epic 2 PB's over 2 of the efforts. Massive kudos to you Sue. You never thought that this would happen again after your riding accident 18 months ago!

Sand its all over

Stretches followed at Splashpoint before we wound up another happy and glorious Monday night.

In other news

• For those of you signed up to our Christmas meal it has been updated to 'dress to impress' . Sue has also very kindly invited us to pre drinks at hers. This sounds very exciting and glamorous! More details nearer the time.

• November daily burpee challenge escalates to 50 per day from this Thursday 7th November.

If you have any other newsworthy items please do send them to me to include in next weeks report.

Have a great week,

Julia X