This morning twelve of us, including first timersFiona & Daisy, volunteered at Junior parkrun and not only earned ourselves a Goodgym good deed we got a parkrun volunteering cred too! Gulit free parkrunning for a couple of months and twelve extra good deeds towards our total for the January challenge!

We met in a deserted Hove Park at 8.30am where we were assigned our roles by regular Goodgymmer Roy, who was wearing his parkrun Run Director hat today. I got to do the warm up, Helena was tail walker, Michael was Fun Manager (ok funnel!) and everybody else was doing the essential role of marshalling and cheer leading as the 127 four to fourteen year olds completed the 2km course. Roy explained that the junior parkrun needs more marshalls than the regular parkrun so they often struggle to get enough volunteers so our help was really appreciated. All parkruns need volunteers to ensure they go ahead week after week and volunteering at the junior event means you don’t even have to give up your own Saturday parkrun. A win, win situation!

Once we'd cheered and high fived the juniors to the finish line we took on the 2km course ourselves and followed it up with a short fitness session making use of the outdoor gym equipment in the park. , Rosemary impressed us all by banging out several pull ups, whilst most of us struggled to just hang on to the pull up bar!

By the time we’d finished our session the deserted park we’d met in at 8,30am had transformed to a hive of activity including boot campers, tennis players, dog walkers and footballers showing what a great resource our city parks are.

Hope to see you on Tuesday for our next group run helping out in Hanove and Elm Grove ward.

A big Goodgym welcome to Martin and Cassia who joined us for their first Brighton Goodgym group run. Roy's quest for a parkrun PB was another near miss but perhaps Santa will bring one over Christmas and we can give him a cheer in the New Year. And well done to Andy for winning his league in his running club!

After a short run we arrived at Sloane Court, a council run seniors accommodation with a very big garden and resident Tony showed us to the very large shrubs that were blocking the back gate. Some of us set to work on cutting back hard, whilst others worked on clearing and weeding paths, and after about 30 minutes we'd achieved what would take one person most of a day. Tony was delighted, even though at the end he told us to 'jog on!'

The fitness session was an advent calendar special, with 2 teams racing for the numbered cones and then everyone completing the present of lots of lovely exercises written on the back of the number. By this time the evening (and our bottoms) had turned somewhat soggy, despite the forecast for a fine evening, we even had a bit of thunder and lightening.

See you all at the social on Thursday, 6.30pm at the Globalls at Brighton Marina and then TGI's for 7.45pm. If not have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, thanks for all your efforts over the last year, looking forward to more getting fit by doing good in 2020!

On Saturday morning...some having completed the Hove Park park run...some like me running there but arriving too late and missing it...and some meeting at the location....7 of us took part in a community mission to help support a Christmas choir fundraiser for loneliness charity Together Co. They are hoping to raise awareness of their work and raise funds in the community. So having met at All Saints Church in Hove we combined to arrange and line up over 500 chairs and our feng shui abilities were severely tested. After an hour or so of moving chairs,tables and prepping in general we were kindly presented with pastries and tea. A lovely mission in a stunning setting.