The big news tonight was All About a Roy as he became the latest in a recent spate of runners reaching the magic milestone of a whopping 50 Good Deeds! Oh Roy! What an achievement! And brilliantly timed so you didn’t have to share any of the limelight with any of the other recent entrants to the 50 club! Now If I were a Roy I would probably have offered to write this run report myself so I could big myself up but as he didn’t the task has fallen to me to write an Ode to Roy! The best thing about Roy as far as I’m concerned is if he drinks more than 2 pints at the monthly social you’ve got a pretty good chance of persuading him to write the run report. He’s also thought of a couple of really good puns. Back in his glory days he came up with School Runnings & Back to the Fuscia and I remain hopeful that his recent dry spell will soon be over.

In other news we had 3 new runners joining us for their first run, we were very happy to meet Oz, Joe & Mike. Welcome!

After a 1.5km run to meet Cllrs David & Elaine we split into sub groups to tackle various tasks around the Hanover & Elm Grove ward. Our recent efforts at painting over graffiti have massively reduced its impact in the area and we continued our efforts tonight with Emma & Helena tackling some small new scribbles including a very Badly Drawn Roy and Katharine & David spraying over some junction boxes & bins.

8 other runners including Roy (Roy Division?) took on a bigger area just off the Lewes Road and the pictures show quite a transformation. Great work!

Everybody else worked around the area at the bottom of Elm Grove litter picking and battling the bind weed in front of the Percy Wagner Almshouses and the collective efforts of 20 Brighton Goodgymers has done wonders to keep the neighbourhood looking smart.

The Fitness Session on the Level involved a pack of cards and a game that led to Carly being crowned King of Burpees! We wiill definitely play this game again, perhaps in a slightly different format for no other reason than it opens a whole new pack of card related pun possibilities!

Have a great Bank Holiday folks, see you next Tuesday!

So we’ve taken a collaborative approach to run report writing this week. We went to the pub after the run, drank some alcohol and took turns to write the following unedited run report, the work of Rosie, Roy, Dennis & Katherine. The only thing I (Tara) have to add is welcome to Emma, joining us for the first time and actually I’ll be eligible in 1925!!....

There was a distinctly autumnal nip in the air last night when we visited Tony (and his double entendres) at Sloane Court - the nicest seniors’ home in Brighton. (So nice that some of us have asked to put our names down for some time in the 2030’s (Tara) or 2040’s (everyone else)).

Following Tara’s obligatory - and fascinating - health and safety announcements, we discovered the old adage “no news is good news” is not always true, as none of us had anything to share except the unfortunate and literally breaking news that Michael has broken a metatarsal, in his attempts to make the Southampton squad for next week’s game against Liverpool.

On to tonight’s task: barrow-fulls of weeds were cleared under the watchful eye of Andy, an expert gardener who kindly gave up his time to tell us weed from plant.

Dennis confessed a new fondness for slugs and snails since becoming a good gymer, but is still acquiring the skill of determining plants from weeds - you’re not alone there Dennis.

Tara then had us entertaining the residents who peered from their windows as we completed an “I went to the supermarket and bought...” style fitness session with crunches, mountain climbing, burpees etc - like that game you play on a wet family holiday, except with joint and muscle aches.

But no matter, because we had pain-relieving beers and 2 for 1 cocktails to look forward to at our monthly social, along with Jay’s far-fetched Worthing GoodGym stories, where health and safety and general admin are foolishly overlooked and replaced by fitness sessions - no thanks!

It was a big night for Brighton Goodgym as we celebrated our second birthday, that’s 2 whole years, 104 weeks of getting fit by doing good! And a big group of you answered the call and made sure we had plenty of hands on deck to complete our two tasks.

Welcome tonight to Ian, Ellie & Carly joining us for the first time and welcome back to Dennis who we haven’t seen since last summer. It was also a lovely surprise to see Jonathon & Lydia waiting for us at the task, who were both present on our epic rainy launch night two years ago. So with Helena and me, that made four of the 38 original Goodgym runners from 2 yeas ago present tonight. But whether it was your first night or your 100th really doesn’t matter, the joy of Goodgym is that it welcomes runners who come every week or those that drop in from time to time, You all contribute and you all make us special!

So after our usual warm up round the fountain, we headed east to Kemp Town, dropping 4 runners off to help a group of residents reduce noise and air pollution from delivery vehicles at the back of Morrisons by filling 2 large planters with soil and limiting the space those pesky lorries can idle their engines. Everyone else headed to Somerset Point, a council run seniors housing scheme surrounded by a garden, maintained mostly by residents. Eilleen set us to work on various weeding, pruning, sweeping and chopping tasks including giving a Hebe (that’s a plant!) a radical haircut, resulting in tonights pun (thank you Megan!). Somerset Point is currently surrounded by scaffolding due to maintenance work, so the gardens have taken a bit of a bashing, so tidying up was the order of the day and Eilleen was delighted with how much we were able to achieve in just 45 minutes.

I thought as a birthday treat, as well as some brand new gloves, I’d keep the fitness session easy and fun with a twist on the game of ‘pass the parcel’ but David complained it was too easy so a bonus AMRAP (as many reps as possible) of 11/7/17 squats/crunches/jumping jacks to mark our birthdate upped the ante slightly and ensured you were all breathless and sweaty for our birthday celebration social.

We had another great turn out for the social this month, a huge thank you to Helena for making the evening special with a cake featuring photos from the previous 2 years, party hats and Happy Birthday banners. We even had a Happy Birthday message all the way from Hong Kong from regular runner Sherman. What a special night, what a special two years! Thank you all for your amazing contribution to Brighton Goodgym.

p.s this Saturday is our monthly park run meet up at Preston Park and good luck to anyone running the Phoenix 10k on tonight!