Sahara one night sand

On a day when the weirdest thing was the weather a small but select group of GoodGym runners met at Splashpoint. Tonight we welcomed back Lucy for her second GG task together with Duncan , Gill and Beth. Special mention to Belinda on a well earned holiday and massive GG healing vibes to Sue who has broken her knee after a horse incident. GG visitors coming your way next week !

This hurricane has my head swirling

Sailing close to the windy coastline of Worthing we opted for a sheltered route for our warm up through the precinct before arriving for our first visit to 'Stepping Stones' which is one of Worthing churches homeless projects. We were warmly met by Alistair who tasked us with a garden tidy up.

Weeding around the bush

After a distribution of tools we set about raking,weeding and pruning with a warm glow of head torches illuminating the garden.

To Dark up the wrong tree

30 minutes later and despite the darkness the beds had a complete makeover. Gone were the tall weeds and overgrown bushes to be replaced with smart looking earthy beds. The team were as energetic as follows

Duncan - Hoe hoe Lucy - Don't go raking my heart Beth - Weeding lights Gill - Pruning streak Alistair - All weeding aside

Lost but not least

After a tidy up and cheery goodbye we headed off west incorporating alternate tree and lampost sprints before hitting the seafront for some wind assisted running. It was all going so smoothly until I realised that I needed to be reunited with my car key that I had left at the task . So the girls made a slight detour back to the task to pick it up whilst Duncan set off on a wind assisted effort run back to base and then adding extra mileage in his legs by running back to meet us. Unfortunately Beth and I managed to misplace Lucy and Gill who literally went 'around the houses' looking for us and also driving Beth and I around several blocks trying to relocate them ! My fretful state was thankfully relieved when we all reunited along the precinct along with Duncan too. Happy times returned ( Phew !)

** As blind as a boot**

As we arrived back at my car there was another funny moment of madness when I was standing by the wrong car ( same colour and shape) trying to open the boot. Imagine the hilarity when we looked down the line of cars to see mine standing perfectly wide open!

The boot is on the other foot

Duncan experienced what it was like to stand in my shoes for few minutes with some amusing post run moments of trying on my Hoka's accompanied by Lucy's sloe gin and vodka making stories that would 'make your hair sand on end'

Although the nights are dark you are always assured of a bright welcome at GoodGym Worthing. Hope to see you next week

All the best

Julia :)

Another fantastic turnout this evening for GoodGym Norwich.

A big welcome to new runners Lucy, Millie & Katy

A massive congratulations to Bill for doing his 10th Group Run!

This week Katy was our back runner

Tonight's task was a marine litter pick around the Riverside Road area. It was a nice 1.6km distance each way.

On arrival we were greeted by Lottie who is from Keep Britain Tidy's River Care team. She had all the kit we needed and I put everyone in groups and set them on their ways.

Catherine & Samantha found a couple of frogs while on their adventure, with the former being concerned she was disturbing them mating.

I did take a photo of one of the frogs but it didn't come out very well (not a photo of them mating obviously!).

The team covered a big area this evening but for some reason it was actually quite clean already so there wasn't a huge amount of litter to be collected.

Once we finished we regrouped on Bishops Gate Bridge to return the equipment to Lottie.

It was then quite handy that Gas Hill was right opposite us :-) so the challenge was for everyone to make it to the top of Norwich's notorious peak, whether they ran or walked... and everyone made it so no-one peaked too soon (always a good thing).

After a recovery back down Gas Hill, we headed back towards The Forum. 1st stop was for the sprint challenge on Gentleman's Walk. 2nd stop was a little fitness session outside The Forum. This included 3 rounds of push-ups on each step then box jumps on each step. For anyone that wanted to I gave them an option of doing the Wheelbarrow up the steps, which Alex managed to do while 'twerking' at the same time.

Next week's run takes us to Joseph's Other Coat Charity Shop.

On a breezy late summers evening in not so sunny Worthing 7 runners set off for a warm up run to and around the pier before arriving just opposite Anchor Gardens for a ground force style garden makeover in double quick time.

Weeding around the bush

In a digging weeding and pruning frenzy of activity we found a plethora of hidden rocks, gems, gnomes and other buried treasure .It always amazes me just how much work a small and committed GoodGym team can achieve in a such a short amount of time and tonight was no exception.

Makeover makes perfect

Duncan got stuck into the digging describing his Go Ape adventure over the weekend but there was no monkeying around this evening !

Michelle applied some brute force on some stubborn remains of a tree as well as hands and knees weeding with our host Chrystabell .

Flowerbeds transformed from weed ridden to freshly dug over soft earth. Nick did some fine pruning on the evergreen bush known as 'Lemon Cypress Wilma' and even managed to provide Belinda with a shower of green highlights to compliment her recent haircut ( She almost got an extra trim ! )

Gill didn't need to make a besom ( broom ) this week so instead attacked the ivy with the same energy as she does bindweed with an impressive few bags of results.

Beth seemed to be keeping a low 'rafael ' this evening with intricate weeding thinly disguising some mobile tennis action :) However her GG superpowers are steadily growing.....

Efforts make us fitter

With some very happy faces and humble thanks we waved goodbye and headed off on another shortish run to Homefield Park for the fitness session centered around the outdoor gym.

This proved fast and fun with tag teams alternating with sprints around the park and circuits on the equipment. As the efforts on the running got harder I did observe that the seated options on the machines appeared to be particularly popular.

Some chin up strength work completed the fitness element before the group split into 2 for the run back to base and stretches.

Fun times ahead

We finished off with some planning for a GoodGym social. Watch this space for more details coming soon .

Thanks so much for your hard work and dedication team . Tonight was the complete essence of a good deed.

Julia :)

32 runners ran 3k, did a hill session , and cleared a meadow of rubbish.

If anyone would have told me we'd have 32 runners at GoodGym Norwich by the 7th week I'd probably have laughed in your face hahaha... well tonight it just happened!

We had a nice 1.6km route each-way as we were heading to a meadow near Cow Tower, which belongs to the Great Hospital... a building that has been around for over 700 years (that's probably the only bit of history my brain knows).

Again, we had several new runners - 11 in fact so too many to name but our members gave them a warm welcome and made them feel at home straight away.

We congratulated everyone who took part in Run Norwich 10k on Sunday.

Colin got his docs checked to he can now be DBS checked so he can go on our Coach & Mission runs... you can do the same by bringing your ID docs to me before or after any Monday evening run.

A thank you to Carl & Laura for being back runners.

As tonight's run was a shorter run I had some spicy workouts planned for the group... keep reading to see what they were.

After the warm up and a very long head count, we headed to our destination, which took us through the beautiful grounds of the Norwich Cathedral - it did give me flash backs of the Run Norwich 10k from the day before but luckily this time we were running downhill.

We were greeted by Neil and he explained the area that we could do a litter/rubbish collection on so the group got into pairs, got themselves some gloves and bin liners and off they went... just like The Wobbles.

After 30 minutes I got everyone to collect in all the rubbish they had collated and I was quite astonished with how well they'd all done - there was bike wheels, a sign from 2013, a bed, a mattress etc. There was technically around 15 hours put into that by our awesome volunteers, which I'm very proud of them for doing.

So after the task there had been rumours that something may occur by the very steep and nearby Gas Hill... and these rumours were true! We did a 8-minute Kenyan Hills routine, which is a continuous loop so you take the ascend very steady and focus on moving your arms but then you take the descent quicker and don't treat it as a recovery. After 8 gruelling minutes (and many death stares) we had a couple of minutes recovery before heading back towards The Forum.

The only problem was I wasn't finished yet... we still had 10 minutes to kill :-) so coincidentally there was a nice rectangle shaped grass area within the Cathedral grounds so we stopped for a 10-minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible). This consisted of 5 burpees, running, 10 push-ups, animal walk/crawl/jump, 5 v-sits, running, 10 squats and another animal walk/crawl/jump - all exercises that will assist with running performance.

After the 10 minutes I did a quick head count to see if I was still anyones friends hahaha and we headed back to The Forum for a stretch and finished the evening with a trip to the pub, which over half of us were able to attend, which is a fantastic turnout.

Next week we have a similar task and distance run on the Marriott's Way. Sign up here.