Congratulations to regular runner Rosie Robbins on reaching the remarkable achievement of 50 good deeds! She started her Goodgym adventure back in the day up north in that there London, but London's loss is Brighton's gain and for the past two years or so she's been good deeding down south. And let's not forget what a great social secretary she was back in the good old days when we were allowed to have social lives!

At the other end of the Goodgym range of experience we were very happy to welcome Lucy for her first Brighton good gym (another refugee from the big city, having previously completed a couple of good deeds in Lambeth!) and Nathan discovering the joys of Goodgym for the very first time.

Our task tonight was to help the residents of the Craven Vale Estate tidy up. We connected with Garry from the council's Tidy up Team to supply us with bags and tools, so armed with proper litter pickers and bag holding hoops half the group had a good old litter pick. The rest of us using , scrapers, spades, brooms and forks weeded the bed in front of the block and tidied up the weedy kerbs and steps to make it easier for residents to get in and out. David from the litter picking group reported seeing a frog or toad cross the road and thought we might get a pun out of it but my punning brain is not working tonight! And Sherman found some kids shoes and despite normally being our best photographer only managed to get one good pic! Sadly my new phone hasn't improved my night time photography skills so the photos don't really demonstrate what a difference we made! Well done all!

OH MY GIDDY PLANT

Last night was all about the plants and the planters and thankfully we had a massive gang of GoodGymers to tackle our two tasks. They probably quite fancied the pub afterwards too.

Big up Angela, Mira, Georgina, Kerry, Em and Clare for coming on their first ever GoodGym run! And nice one to all the tourists who came for a piece of the Lambeth pie. 🥧

Tonight we had 2 run options: * George took a small group on a serious 6k trek to Crown Dale Surgery in West Norwood to help the GP Food Co-op rearrange some planters and fill them up with soil. * The rest of us went on a 2k jaunt to Myatt's Field for some bindweed removal and FITNESS FUN.

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George's group arrived in West Norwood to be mysteriously greeted by nobody... but then they discovered the plans for the planters and they were off, lifting and shifting to get them into place. There was some excellent lifting from the legs (see pics) and they even had time to fill a planter and a half before heading back to base. It was a warm evening for all this work and those guys absolutely smashed it. 👏👏👏

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Everyone else had a quick warm up with a classic knees up and kick-ass and began the run to Myatt's Field Park. We were greeted by Eliza who showed us the task - removing nasty bindweed from the compost heap. Unfortunately it was wreaking a bit of havoc and needed to be removed pronto.

// For all those keen gardeners: Apparently growing plants in compost with any hint of bindweed is a bad idea. It'll just wrap around your lovely plants and suffocate them. //

So we removed the pallets and the tarps to find an absolute tonne of the stuff, still managing to grow in the dark. Everyone was then very diligent with removing all traces of bindweed (as well as any rubbish we could find, obviously. #goodgym). We filled up a couple of big sacks and made a reasonable pile of rubbish.

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The highlight was undoubtably the discovery of a family of frogs and even some newts! Despite a couple of screams, some brave souls moved the frogs to avoid them getting squashed.

We then had a quick game of RUNOPOLY in the park. It's basically circuits:

• Community Chest - Press Ups
• Pass GO - Sprints
• Squatting (it's a property-themed game after all)
• Chance - ??? It's a mystery (I tell you what to do).

30 seconds on, 30 seconds rest, next exercise. Twice round. Everyone smashed it. 👊

After that, we ran back to Papa's, had a nice stretch, decided that Papa's park's concrete bench needs to be painted GoodGym red (more on that in a few weeks time...) and then we hit the pub.

Ace work, everybody. 👌

Next week we've got 2 tasks; finishing off the soil shoveling at Crown Dale and back to Ruskin Park Community Garden. Sign up here.