First of all a big warm Wednesday welcome to Dave who joined us for his first run tonight! We had record breaking numbers so HUGE thanks to everyone for coming out and Egg for making a special appearance as well as a return from Penny & Frankie who last joined us a year ago at this trip to Naomi House. Please come back again this year!

After our intro and a quick warmup we headed south to St Swithuns school where we were greeted by the ever-organised caretaker, Chris. He provided a whole new level of task organisation and delegation with carefully masked out areas for painting, notes on what needed doing and other notes of other jobs. Impressive!

The group of nearly 30 strong were split into different tasks - many taking up painting jobs, while others took on buffing the floors (or wrestling with the buffer in India and Pippa's case), cleaning carpets, wiping down tables, and other tasks Chris could find for us. The "buff" group in the hall added a whole level of exercise to their task, undertaking the lunge and squirt method of floor cleaning. There was lots of laughter and lots of tasks were completed saving Chris 18+ hours of work, so he was very grateful for our help!

We headed back north to the community centre, some of the Southsea lot split off, while the rest headed back to take part in a fitness session of squats, glute exercises, press ups, rows and single leg squats.

Another wonderful Wednesday!

Don't forget there is a community mission on Thursday evening and the Southsea Parkrun takeover on Saturday morning where many familiar faces will be volunteering and donning our red t-shirts! All the listings can be found here

Hope to see you soon!

Firstly, a big welcome to Jack tonight who joined us for his first run and welcome back again to Egg from GG York who's visiting us but pretending that she's down south to see the family!

T-shirt modelling

Good to see Ellie andJoe modelling their new red tees and Tracey in a 50 good deeds black number. Tracey also got to wear the celebratory cap of good deeds as this was the first group run she'd been to since completing the big 5-0. It was a double celebration tonight as she had also had a birthday since the last group run so treated us to some chocolatey treats! Maxine has also made it to 50 good deeds but we only have the one cap so she gets to be the height of fashion next week!

The Task

Tonight's task was sorting out clothing donations for the Samaritans. We can't go south to "Sam's Place" (the shop) on a Wednesday now as they have a meditation class going on so we headed north to their offices. There were lots of donations to bring downstairs, sort and then return upstairs so we got going and found some gems as usual. Jen took to modelling the shoes and wearing a pair of perilously high heels for most of the task. Lynn, Judy and Catherine all found items so good that they've put them aside for their own purchases! Good job Judy made it to the task after a day in London... although Tony was a little disappointed as he thought it might mean he makes it to 100 good deeds first (they're both now on 99!)

Our big challenge of the night was trying to keep the noise down as we were next to the office that the listeners work from. We aren't known for our quietness and there were Quality Street chocolates passed round too as a thank you from Anne who is the task owner. I think we just about managed to keep our volume low-ish. At least the walls are thick in these old buildings.

Sadly, the rain that had held up for a run up to the task decided to come on for our run back. It got heavier and heavier and unfortunately the back few got REALLY wet. Plus everyone running or cycling home from the group run. Got to love the winter!!

Thank yous

BIG thanks to Maura for the photos, Rosie for walk leading (perfectly timed both ways), Maxine and Mel for middle and back marking and Tony for running around like a border collie rounding everyone up!

Coming up

Next weekend there are lots of opportunities to help out with the foodbank/fareshare/trussell trust big push to get donations for the foodbanks in partnership with Tesco. They are all listed in 2 hour slots and there is space for a few volunteers in each slot. Check out the Portsmouth community missions page here for more details. Hidden in amongst those good deeds is a litter pick as well.

Next week's group run is more charity shop donation sorting but this time it's a little closer, at Naomi House. Sign up here to join us if you haven't already!