300 good deeds done

What a night to celebrate our wonderful Barbara milestone. Our very own Babs has been doing good since May 2017 . She not only attends the group sessions but also volunteers at Wadars, our local animal shelter, at least once a week. Congratulations and Thank you ! We cant imagine GoodGym life without you :)

Cardboard City

The community rooms have been a long term project for a few years now. Every time we go back its overgrown again so this year we have come up with another plan. Tonight John and Belinda kindly recycled their recent electric bike purchase packaging to lay below the freshly dug earth. However firstly it needed to be dug!

Whilst the star of the evening headed out to get some steps in with Belinda and Daisy , who it was lovely to see again ( Happy New Year :) ) the rest of the team set to work.

Paul got stuck in the end of the garden that we had barely touched before. He was joined by Paula and then also Belinda, on her return. Our ultra runner Roxy did some amazing energetic digging perfectly preparing the ground for a generous layer of cardboard to be laid. Barbara joined in with Roxy on her return from walking.

It was so nice to Gillybean back on a Monday night. Special mention goes to Gill who has been busy volunteering at the food bank Tuesdays and sometimes Wednesdays too. Shout out to any of you who may be free on a Wednesday as the food bank could do with regular extra volunteers please.

Sarah and John worked and chatted as they always do - take a look at one of the photos of them together - I reckon we could have a caption contest :) John was in charge of the cardboard arranging and beavered away whilst some of us stood and admired his handiwork !

At the end of the task and to mark the special day, the team formed an arch with their tools for Barbara to run through - we managed to capture it with a video and photo too. Some then said their farewells whilst the rest of us headed to the pub for part 2 of our celebrations.

Barbara generously bought us all a round of drinks before we presented her with a beautiful engraved glass gift that she can drink her vegan hot chocolate in. What a lovely evening it was. Makes me feel very proud to know you all.

Here's to the next celebration - Will it be Sarah's 100th ?!

Have a good week.

Julia xxx

On a freezing night in February ❄️❄️❄️

Massive thanks to my 4 amazing team tonight.

Despite the dampness and freezing conditions El , Roxy, Megan and Paul all turned out to help brighten our seafront prom in readiness for our much awaited Spring. 💐🌹🌸 🏵. This evening we were at our very own seafront flowerbed to plant up some May flowering bulbs.

Luckily a few weeks ago the team had sorted and prepared the bed ready for planting. So tonight, it made our life easy to plant a variety of 150 bulbs. We can't wait to see them come up. Hopefully it will be colourful !

After we finished we went for a beautiful moonlit stroll around the pier and had a great catch up chat.

We all agreed that we were so pleased to have got out and done something good on am evening when it would have been so easy to stay at home in the warm ! Thank you and hope to see you all next week for Barbara's 300th !

Have a great week and stay warm.

Julia xx

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Thank goodness its February

January is always a long month and today we saw a glimmer of hope for longer days with the daylight stretching out just a tiny bit at both ends.

However ,January wasn't all bad! GG Worthing had the most successful challenge month we had ever had ! I had set challenging targets for both tasks and distance ( 65 good deeds and 2500 km) but we managed to plough on through both ending on a scintillating 99 and 2746 respectively. Many congratulations and thank you to each and every one of you that contributed your time and effort. I'm so proud of our achievements 😇❤️

Byron Road

Turning Tides, our local homeless charity offer a hostel at Byron Road and had requested we do a tidy up of the front garden.

Tonight the group split into two groups with Paul Megan and Sarah heading down to the prom for some fitness and JohnAnneRoxyRyan and Paula cracking on with the task. Special welcome back to Paula - we are so pleased you have returned to your GG family 😀

The fitness team did a combination of sprint drills and functional moves to support running - I absolutely know that Paulis going to be taking my name in vain when he wakes up in the morning for his Tuesday bike ride 😅 Both Sarah and Megan and Paul, all agreed that the interval training is not something they would do on their own so if you fancy getting some training in then come along on a Monday evening!

We returned to pitch in with the tidy up where we filled 4 bags of debris. There was pruning , lots of sweeping , weeding and general debris in the bags which Paula and I subsequently dropped off at the seafront bins where the refuse team will pick them up.

Photos done - thank you to Johns phone, we all headed back to our snug homes! I can't wait for light evenings again ☀️

With just hours until the finish of the January challenge, 4 of us put in a final surge to get the total GG tasks over 4500. With our contribution it went to 4501 ! 👏👌💪

Our Worthing target is standing on a tantalising 99 which is way more than we have ever achieved and above and beyond our target of 65 which was already an optimistic one 😇 We also smashed our 2500 km target which was also a challenging one.
I'm so happy and proud of our small but mighty area 😍

Bravo to John , Barbara and our intrepid runner Roxy who came out on Friday afternoon to make a start on litter picking our local beauty spot at Goring Greensward just near to the sea.

We managed to fill the bags we had with us which were soon laden and heavy too. Sadly, we only managed to scratch the surface of the litter strewn verges but we will be back!

Here endeth the 2025 January challenge Amen to that 🙏

The final Saturday of the January Challenge saw Worthing GoodGym well represented at our local parkrun. Two volunteering, and five running the course racking up those essential kilometres. We are so close to hitting our target.

Hip, hip, hip. Hooray!

🎵 Oh we do like to be beside the sea side🎵

The biggest decision today was what pun to use as there had been several suggested which made reference to our very special visitor who had come all the way from the head office team in London to join us. Drum roll please 🥁.... Welcome Jack to the sunny south coast 😎 Belinda won the pun competition 👏

*Eat sleep GoodGym Repeat *

During the January challenge its all about clocking up the good deeds and km's and GG Worthing is absolutely nailing it this year. We have already hit our target of 65 good deeds. The target was set to challenge us and had already been increased from last year. This nicely illustrates the commitment and recent growth in our small but mighty area. Well done team. I'm super proud of you all 👏 🏆

🎵 Dancing in the moonlight

Not quite dancing but we did a nice jaunt along the promenade and around the pier! Anne led the runners, consisting of, El, Stéphane Roxy together with Jack and me back marking.

John led the walking group comprising of Mel, Paul, Ricky, Belinda and Paul We all met on the pier for the obligatory group photo 📸 before convening at the GG flowerbed for the task.

Double Good Deeds Tonight we split into 2 groups with the runners off on a litter pick run and the walkers helping with the tidy up of our flowerbed together with other straggly ones along the prom. The runners paired up. Anne and Jack together with Stephane . They were combining sprints with litter pick stops. This was a great way to combine some fitness with keeping the prom and surrounding areas tidy 😇😇

The walkers also paired up with Paul and El and Ricky and Paul who set off along the prom to work on the flowerbeds along the way. Belinda, John and Mel got stuck into the GG bed. Our flowerbed was transformed!

The runners return 2 bags came back with our intrepid runners ( I'm not entirely convinced much sprinting was done 😅) with Roxy and Steph taking the credit for the biggest bag of litter bounty!

We all packed up and made our way back to the starting point where some of us said our goodbyes whilst others took Ricky up on his suggestion .....

And so to the pub

A group of us finished off the evening at The Egremont for a quick drink and chat. It was a great chance to share ideas about GoodGym and parkrun.

Special mention to Belindawho went on a clandestine parkrun last Saturday which was behind lock and key at a women's prison not too far away. She had also coordinated a car full of kit donations which will be vetted by sniffer dogs, washed and then sold for charity to the ladies.

I sped away with Jack to the train station where he had 3 minutes to get himself on the train back to London. It was an absolute pleasure to meet and host you Jack ! As the headline pun says - we hope you will come back more and more ! 😊

Until the next time - have a great week everyone.

Julia xx