WOW there were a lot of good deed GoodGymers out tonight.... I think we might have broken our own record (with the exception of the launch event). Great to see so many faces tonight.

Welcome to Holly, Kim, Reza, Fatima & Rohima on their first GoodGym good deed!

We had a bit of a task with a difference tonight as the task was brought to us so we didn't have to run anywhere... Holly works for the Ickle Pickles charity & was in need of many GoodGym hands.

Let's do the time wrap again...

We wrapped Lucky Dip presents, sorted many boxes of lego cards into packs of 10 and packed up some leaflets for the Bubble Run. If anyone wants to get involved with the Bubble Run - running or volunteering there's more info here.

A small group of 4 (Sophie, Jo, Lucy & Sam) also opted out of the boiling hot room and went out in the cooler evening to do a sweep up and litter pick at the front of the community centre as we'd noticed last week that there were rather a lot of cigarette butts on the ground. It definitely looks a lot better now!

After the task we split into a walking group (led by Tony) and a running group. The running group went down to the railway bridge to do a lung-bursting session of 6 x 8 second uphill sprints. Lots of enthusiasm and maybe a little bit of competitiveness creeping in! Good work by all! Bonus points as we were back in plenty of time to vacate the room for the MMA group too.

We have lots of other good deeds to get involved with before next Wednesday when we head to the deaf centre. On Saturday at 9 come and join us for Parkrun (don't forget your barcode), beach clean at Southsea at 10 - please sign up here if you are coming to make sure we get your good deed registered, AND a second community mission at 2pm in North End at the Naomi House shop, please make sure you sign up for that here if you are coming along.

See you all very soon. Thanks for a fun evening 😊

Don't forget to start your squat challenge on Friday.... (see Monday's email for details!)

Good numbers at GoodGym Portsmouth this evening... great to see everyone. Plenty of chat and laughter too.

We welcomed Rasha for her first ever group run, and she only thought she was turning up to do a doc check! We also welcomed Rachel for her first run with us, she first ran with GoodGym in Cardiff but now lives down our way. She was also christened Welsh Rachel to differentiate herself from Rachel C who we welcomed back from her Aussie adventure. We also had 2 Sophies with us tonight so they are from here on known as Queen Sophie and Normal Sophie.... this is what happens when you let people choose their own nicknames!

Having a ball

Ashley ran us round to Manor Infants where he had very kindly arranged some indoor tasks - the first was touching up the walls and the skirting. We love a double entendre here in Pompey so that really set the scene for when we started the other task which was clearing out & tidying the PE cupboard - we had saggy balls, balls that were too hard, ball sacks, lumpy balls, balls that needed pumping up - you name it there were plenty of ball related quotes of the night. Once everything had been sorted and was being loaded back into the cupboard there was even a comment about being back in the closet! If you look at the photos you will also see that Lara and Lou have been (self)nominated as playground friends and they very fetching they look too in the yellow cap.

How many GoodGym runners does it take...

...to put together a goal with no instructions? The answer appears to be greater than 16 as we didn't quite manage to work out what pieces went where!

Squats lunge got to do with it?

As it was face-freezingly cold and we are a group of (mostly) southern softies, we did our fitness session inside our room in the community centre. I was impressed that for once we actually left a task in time to do a full fitness session! There were many excellent efforts on the agility ladder, some gorgeous grapevines and skips on the drills station, groaning efforts coming from tricep dip corner and some good air on the squat jumps.

Awesome work from everyone, hope you're not too sore tomorrow!

Next week we are outside so wrap up warm as we return to St Faiths, site of the bindweed battle. And there will be a final chance to bag some good deeds for the January challenge on Thursday 31 January with a plog at Hilsea, meeting at the Rugby Club/Covers car park.

It was a windy morning so a Southsea Parkrun PB would normally be off the cards so a special congrats to Sophie for running a PB this morning.

It's the power of the red T-shirt!

Post - Parkrun it was on with the gloves and out with the litter pickers for the last Southsea Beachwatch beach clean of the year.

No comedy finds today, the best one was one lens out of a pair of sunglasses. We also found lots of strange looking clear jelly like things in amongst the seaweed. They looked a little bit like pale ears.... but fortunately we had a marine biologist on hand to tell us they were actually sea squirts and when they're alive they suck in seawater and squirt it out through a small opening at the top of the ear like structure! Every day's a school day.

We managed to fill the bottom of a bin bag with various small bits of plastic - bottle and tube lids mainly as well as lolly sticks and cigarette butts. Then we headed over the Castle for some warming cups of tea and coffee, much needed!