15 runners lucked out and ran 5.5k on a dry and mild evening.

Task

To run to Oldfield Baptist Church and uproot their flower beds.

Welcome to Mark, who broke a fork on his first group run!

Congratulations to Ollie who hit 3 hours on the button for the Athens Marathon on the weekend. We do not expect him to pull a Pheidippides and run back to Bath bearing news of the battle.

A welcome back to Daisy who joined us for her second run - Steph will get her name right on the third.

Pascale returned in triumph from the Majorca Marathon to lead the run out to Oldfield while a partially-injured Steph back marked and took a shortcut specifically to catch everyone for pressups.

Petal to the metal

We were met with applause by Liz and Chris who handed us spades and forks and assured us that we shouldn't hit any live electrical lines under the flower beds. A short run left us plenty of time to get stuck in and we used every minute of it digging out some well entrenched rose bushes.

We had just enough time for a dab in the dark before running back - with a pit stop for walking lunges of course.

Reminders

Our GoodGym Calendar is on sale for £10. All profits going to the new cancer centre at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

The Christmas party is up, sign up soon!

Tramps like us….Baby we were born to run… up the hill to Exeter Street Hall and give it a jolly good spruce up!

Fans of Bruce Springsteen (I’m a big one, great songs and a social conscience, not to mention those arms!) will know that his band The E Street Band were the inspiration for tonight’s pun. We headed up the hill to Brighton’s very own E Street to continue the good work we did there back in September when we helped them clean up the hall for their grand reopening after some building work. Tonight’s task was continuing the spruce up with some sanding of tables and doors in preparation for varnishing, sweeping up the leaves from the trees outside the hall and applying filler to some nail holes in the wood panelling.

But before we did all that we welcomed Jenny to the group for the first time. Jenny has run a minimum of 1 mile every day so far in 2017, an amazing achievement, give her a cheer! Welcome back also to William who has returned after a few weeks off wth a dodgy knee. We gave Lydia a big cheer as she was the run director at Bevendean Down parkrun on Saturday. Not only did she have to cope with storm Brian there was also all the extra runners who headed out there as all 3 other Brighton park runs were cancelled. Fantastic!

We focussed on technique in the warm up with some heel to toe rockers to fully extend the hips and encourage good, upright running posture. And then we talked about the benefit of shortening the leg lever to make it easier to get a nice quick cadence (steps per minute) and we practiced pulling the foot up under the bum to shorten the leg.

Once we’d got the tables sanded, holes filled and leaves swept we headed back to base via the wonderful Brighton Greenway where we stopped for our fitness session, comprising circuits of plank, tricep dips and jumping jack flies. We headed back to base through the North Laine and whilst we stretched we wished Rose the best of luck for the Beachy Head Marathon she is doing on Saturday. Rather you than me!!

See you next week for our Halloween special to St George’s Hall in Moulsecoomb, but in the meantime enjoy this Bruce classic!