First of all, welcome to Craig who chose a particularly crazy night to come along to GoodGym as we celebrated our FIRST BIRTHDAY

In other firsts.... Craig & Sarah both ran their first marathons - Craig at London and Sarah at Southampton on Sunday. Top marks for effort! Sarah's top tip for recovering from a marathon is to dance to the finish line bands to ease out the legs - it seemed to work for her.

In celebratory style, there were plenty of party hats to go around (Tony finally got to wear the 50 good deeds cap), a headcount to make sure everyone's brains were working and a short run over to Manor Infant School to work in the very overgrown garden.

• Thanks to Ashley for running with us and having us back to the school.
  

The team set to work quickly, weeding the beds, cleaning the polytunnel and attempting to mow the grass (the enthusiasm of goodgym was not matched by the mower which refused to cut the grass after 2 lengths of the garden).

• Rosie, Angela and Sarah made a new friend in the polytunnel, I'm not sure what that spider will make of the new tidy area but hopefully it will still have plenty of flies to eat!
  
• We managed to make a compost pile as tall as Sam.
• Judy and Vicki were put to work identifying plant vs weed.
  

Everyone worked hard shifting weeds and grasses, picking up rubbish and digging over the planting beds. You could definitely see the difference by the end of the task.

Once the equipment had all been wheeled back out of the way we had a couple of party games involving balloons. As usual, plenty of laughter and a few moves that are designed to improve running speed... stealth plyometrics disguised as a party game! And lots of photos. Thanks Laura for the action photos.

Back at the community centre it was time for cakes, complete with 1 candle and for a good number of us who didn't have crazy early starts, a lovely curry from our friends at Pannchi round the corner.

The celebrations continue on Friday at 7pm in Somerstown Hub. Details are here. More food, a quiz and the raffle draw - not to be missed!

There are also 2 community missions on Saturday. One in the morning at the Bubble Rush in Southsea and one around Southsea in the afternoon

Then next week the party hats will be packed away and we'll be heading up the road to an old favourite.... helping sort donations at Naomi House charity shop.

It was great to go back to where it all started tonight and think about all the good deeds we have done in the space of 52 weeks = 930 of them in total!! Angela was with us at the start and has written a blog for GoodGym about the positive impact being part of GoodGym has had on her mental health - read that here - it's well worth 5 minutes of your time.