On a breezy late summers evening in not so sunny Worthing 7 runners set off for a warm up run to and around the pier before arriving just opposite Anchor Gardens for a ground force style garden makeover in double quick time.

Weeding around the bush

In a digging weeding and pruning frenzy of activity we found a plethora of hidden rocks, gems, gnomes and other buried treasure .It always amazes me just how much work a small and committed GoodGym team can achieve in a such a short amount of time and tonight was no exception.

Makeover makes perfect

Duncan got stuck into the digging describing his Go Ape adventure over the weekend but there was no monkeying around this evening !

Michelle applied some brute force on some stubborn remains of a tree as well as hands and knees weeding with our host Chrystabell .

Flowerbeds transformed from weed ridden to freshly dug over soft earth. Nick did some fine pruning on the evergreen bush known as 'Lemon Cypress Wilma' and even managed to provide Belinda with a shower of green highlights to compliment her recent haircut ( She almost got an extra trim ! )

Gill didn't need to make a besom ( broom ) this week so instead attacked the ivy with the same energy as she does bindweed with an impressive few bags of results.

Beth seemed to be keeping a low 'rafael ' this evening with intricate weeding thinly disguising some mobile tennis action :) However her GG superpowers are steadily growing.....

Efforts make us fitter

With some very happy faces and humble thanks we waved goodbye and headed off on another shortish run to Homefield Park for the fitness session centered around the outdoor gym.

This proved fast and fun with tag teams alternating with sprints around the park and circuits on the equipment. As the efforts on the running got harder I did observe that the seated options on the machines appeared to be particularly popular.

Some chin up strength work completed the fitness element before the group split into 2 for the run back to base and stretches.

Fun times ahead

We finished off with some planning for a GoodGym social. Watch this space for more details coming soon .

Thanks so much for your hard work and dedication team . Tonight was the complete essence of a good deed.

Julia :)

Another super long run on the cards tonight... 11.5km in fact!

We welcomed new runners Jonny, Jane and Holly - you picked a good one for your 1st ever GoodGym run :-)

Considering the distance tonight of this evening's run, I was very impressed with the turnout of 18 runners.

We did a little squat based warm up... not sure what everyone thought of the 'in & out' squats though!

Dan volunteered to be back runner this week and so we headed off to Bowthorpe Heritage Community Gardens.

It was good to see David aka Stick Man return and he duly found a stick to run with again this week :-)

So we arrived at the task, in quicker time than I anticipated actually and were greeted by some lovely volunteers of the gardens. It was a very pretty site and they talked through what jobs were in hand for us to do. the group split up so some were weeding the stoned path area, some were weeding general flower beds and the others weeding the camomile bed.

Now to a lot of people's amusement (and bearing in mind my herb knowledge isn't the best) my ability to try and pronounce 'camomile' wasn't the greatest. Attempt 1 = Calamari, Attempt = Cannelloni. If the pronunciation wasn't difficult enough, there's even 2 ways of spelling it! The Americans spell it Chamomile.

Apologies for any funny pictures - I was in a bit of a selfie mood this week!

After 30 minutes of hard and impressive work, we got together all the weeds etc. we managed to collect and there was a lot there! the team got treated - I supplied cookies while they were working and then the garden volunteers provided everyone with some juice before we left for the long journey back.

We all headed back and the run started with a lovely uphill section to get the legs going! Once we got to Earlham Road I let everyone push on for the stretch of road leading up to the bridge, where we all regrouped before the last part to The Forum.

I know next week is Bank Holiday but it'd be great to see some more of you make it to next week's run.

32 runners ran 3k, did a hill session , and cleared a meadow of rubbish.

If anyone would have told me we'd have 32 runners at GoodGym Norwich by the 7th week I'd probably have laughed in your face hahaha... well tonight it just happened!

We had a nice 1.6km route each-way as we were heading to a meadow near Cow Tower, which belongs to the Great Hospital... a building that has been around for over 700 years (that's probably the only bit of history my brain knows).

Again, we had several new runners - 11 in fact so too many to name but our members gave them a warm welcome and made them feel at home straight away.

We congratulated everyone who took part in Run Norwich 10k on Sunday.

Colin got his docs checked to he can now be DBS checked so he can go on our Coach & Mission runs... you can do the same by bringing your ID docs to me before or after any Monday evening run.

A thank you to Carl & Laura for being back runners.

As tonight's run was a shorter run I had some spicy workouts planned for the group... keep reading to see what they were.

After the warm up and a very long head count, we headed to our destination, which took us through the beautiful grounds of the Norwich Cathedral - it did give me flash backs of the Run Norwich 10k from the day before but luckily this time we were running downhill.

We were greeted by Neil and he explained the area that we could do a litter/rubbish collection on so the group got into pairs, got themselves some gloves and bin liners and off they went... just like The Wobbles.

After 30 minutes I got everyone to collect in all the rubbish they had collated and I was quite astonished with how well they'd all done - there was bike wheels, a sign from 2013, a bed, a mattress etc. There was technically around 15 hours put into that by our awesome volunteers, which I'm very proud of them for doing.

So after the task there had been rumours that something may occur by the very steep and nearby Gas Hill... and these rumours were true! We did a 8-minute Kenyan Hills routine, which is a continuous loop so you take the ascend very steady and focus on moving your arms but then you take the descent quicker and don't treat it as a recovery. After 8 gruelling minutes (and many death stares) we had a couple of minutes recovery before heading back towards The Forum.

The only problem was I wasn't finished yet... we still had 10 minutes to kill :-) so coincidentally there was a nice rectangle shaped grass area within the Cathedral grounds so we stopped for a 10-minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible). This consisted of 5 burpees, running, 10 push-ups, animal walk/crawl/jump, 5 v-sits, running, 10 squats and another animal walk/crawl/jump - all exercises that will assist with running performance.

After the 10 minutes I did a quick head count to see if I was still anyones friends hahaha and we headed back to The Forum for a stretch and finished the evening with a trip to the pub, which over half of us were able to attend, which is a fantastic turnout.

Next week we have a similar task and distance run on the Marriott's Way. Sign up here.