Last night the Brighton Goodgymers took on storm Brendan, gaining some strength training as we ran against the swirling winds! A colossal effort from everyone as we ran along the seafront! Welcome to Tom who joined us for his group run; hope the weather hasn’t put you off joining us again as part of your training for the Brighton Marathon.

Last night was a night of two tasks; helping out at the Scope shop in Hove and delivering newsletters to the residents of Landsdowne Road for the Extinct Rebellion.

Eleven of us ran to George Street, meeting up with Tabitha, to help the lovely Heather with stock checking and sorting. Scope is a charitable organisation who support those with disabilities be recognised as contributing members of society. Emma and Bernard stock checked Christmas books and cards, Abi pulled out a selection of ladies’ belts from stock to be added to the accessories display, Roy and Jacob sorted through stock and helped David, Michelle and Tabitha pull winter clothes out of deep storage. Ollie was temporary lost to the back of the stock room while Sherman and Tom labelled ladies scarves, pulling out their favourites to share with the others! With some headway to the never ending work that Heather seems to have to do, we ran on back to the Brighton i360, completing a fartlek type run with the use of the lampposts along the seafront. Fartlek, which means speedplay, is a form of continuous interval training used to improve our reactive speed so we don’t get pipped at the post on raceday!

Tara, Frannie, Andy, Daisy and Rosie had the second task in hand as Rosie reports: A smaller group ran a shorter distance (or so we thought) to deliver "Hourglass", the appropriately-named Extinction Rebellion newsletter. Running up the steps and front paths of every house on Lansdowne Place and surrounding streets in Hove was a workout in itself and meant extra time for Tara's gruelling routine on the concrete blocks in front of the i360.

Back together again we shared in the other team’s fun; Tara put us through a series of body strengthening exercises, which this Goodgymer is very much feeling today! Back to base and stretching done, we headed out for our monthly social to the Dead Soul Wax bar.

Make sure you sign up for next week's run to St Lukes for some kitchen cleaning on behalf of the Real Junk Food Project.

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!