Today 18 brave GoodGymers met at Victoria Gardens on a freezing 2 degrees celsius evening...brrrrr

Before the start of the session, we welcomed back Rosieand Meland we celebrated my milestone of reaching 100 deeds by doing good since September 2017 😀. Admittedly I could've reached this number a lot sooner, if I showed up to every session I signed up for and changed my mind at the last minute! Guilty 😅

Today's task was an exciting one! We ran to Brighton Table Tennis Club that joined forces with the Real Junk Food Project to create a junk food cafe in the hall next to the BTTC. We were greeted by Rachel from BTTC that gave us a set of tasks to choose from:

A) A task for the Bold(s) and the Beautiful that like to live their lives on the edge: carrying heavy metal closets up 3 flights of stairs, carrying 'already damaged' sign boards, moving a heavy wood pallet with nails coming out of it and moving various other items. B) A task for those who like to play it safe and probably sleep with the lights on: litter picking in the car park, weeding, sweeping, dusting and collecting freebies kindly offered by the BTTC C) A task that really doesn't fit any category: paper shredding!

I won't be naming names and disclosing who did what but you can see for yourselves in the photos below 😀

After the task was completed, we ran to the terrace in Madeira Drive for a fun fitness session arranged by the one and only Tara. Albeit 7 GoodGymers who called it quit and ran back home, the remaining 11 runners started with running loops around the ramp, doing an intense session of 4 minute press-ups, a 3 minute AMRAP (As Much Raps As Possible) of cardio, a 2 minute Warrior 3 Yoga pose followed by a jumping-squats-off between Jay and Tara while the rest of us cheered their favorite athlete.

We wrapped up the session, said our goodbyes and ran back to base feeling a little better for completing another GoodGym deed 😀

---

-- Amro Tabari

Twas the last one before Christmas and all was not well! With a number of dropouts due to covid and illness our numbers were depleted but the lure of a Christmas party still drew 10 hardy souls to our last task of the year!

It was a two for one task with an indoor and an outdoor task, needless to say the indoor task was more popular. So most of the group headed off to the Real Junk Food Project to get the kitchen clean for Christmas!

We vacuumed, wiped, scrubbed and mopped the kitchen and cafe areas and task owner Emma was very grateful for our efforts to help keep this excellent project spick and span.

The other (braver) group headed off to the delightful back streets of Elm Grove to paint over some graffiti to get the town ready for the party season. But rather than painting the town red it was a mixture of grey, white and magnolia! We made light work of a number of walls despite a very stubborn old paint tin taking a while to crack. We then joined back up with the main group for the fitness.

Although I say the main group, the temptation of the pub had proved too much for many so only five us braved the drizzle to do a couple of laps of the Christmas market before heading off to the party! We lost a few more to Covid concerns and all agreed a bumper summer party might be the best approach in the New Year.

So that was the last task of the year, it has been another strange one but it has been wonderful to get back to Goodgym and see everyone again. All that is left to say is Merry Christmas and a Happy (hopefully better) New Year!

Not that anyone needs a reminder that the festive season is about to go into OVERDRIVE, the Brighton Santa Bus was in town!

Not to be distracted, ten Brighton Goodgymers met, pleased by the milder but wetter weather. A brief, but uphill, run to the Brigton Community Kitchen where we met Jo who runs the Social Enterprise. The Community Kitchen run a variety of cooking classes to the general public, from curries and dim sum to cakes and guides to nutrition. The money made from these classes go on to fund sessions for those who need life skills to provide a means of supporting themselves.

As always, Jo was very organised with a list of jobs for us to do including; sorting through cupboards and drawers and sanitsing EVERYTHING! With the tunes playing we got a lot done in 40 minutes including a last scramble to sort the measuring spoons and cups (which a few Goodgymers hadn't come across before!)

With the kitchen 99.9% bug free we jogged down to the seafront only to be beaten back by the wind and rain! A quick diversion back in land we set up for our fitness session. For those who missed it, but don't want to miss out we did; 10 step ups (5 on each leg) to improve our glutes, 10 tricep dips to improve our triceps (obvs) and 10 V crunches to improve our core.

Three rounds completed we made our way back to where we started, waving each other off as we went on our ways home.