Six Good Gym runners helped local volunteers with setting up and running Spring in the Patch community festival. It was luckily mainly a dry April day for set-up until about half way through the event when it started raining unfortunately. Juliet (who is also a Patch volunteer committee member) ran the community mission. Sarah and Pippa helped with set-up which involved putting up tents, carrying boxes from the container, setting up the bar and tea tent. Sarah came back for another volunteer shift later collecting donations on the gate, the innovation of being able to now take card donations has really helped. Nikki and Michael joined later too for different shifts, both on the tea tent serving tea, coffee, cold drinks and a range of home-made delicious cakes. The event attracted about 300 people and had four bands, bar, tea tent, a range of stalls including craft, hair braiding, face painting, Green party, Labour party and activities such as yoga and archery. We event had a potential MP volunteering on the bar! It was a very successful event, despite the rain and the Good Gym volunteers made a big difference.

Today the GoodGym gang ran 7 km to Wellsbourne Community Garden and back.

We welcomed new members Paul, Paul and Paul.

Stalwart member Rosie was running her 50th session!

We met Lucy, our task owner, at the Wellsbourne Healthcare Centre. She explained they had a volunteer gardening day tomorrow. Our task was to dig holes to plant wild flowers and plants to attract pollinators. We readied our destructive green fingers and shovels and got to work. Others made swift work of tidying and weeding the garden.

Stefania did a fitness exercise session to work on all those muscles we had neglected while running and digging.

To thank us, lovely Lucy kindly gave us cooking herbs from the garden and chocolate. How nice 🙂!

Thrilled at the prospect of it being LIGHT OUTSIDE since the clocks went back, we enjoyed a sunny (but still chilly) evening in Hanover.

With plenty of new faces at the meeting point, we started with introductions and congratulated Pippa on 50k last weekend, and wished Olivia good luck for the London marathon on Sunday. Then it was straight into some hill workouts, with a long slow hill to endure at the start, then a wee speedy one up to the Pepper Pot at the top of Queen's Park.

Arriving at the task, we were met by fellow Goodgymer Michelle, who has a side gig as a primary teacher. She showed us the half-built monsters being prepared for the Children's Parade, which kicks off Brighton Festival in May. The theme is Where the Wild Things Are, and we were wildly excited to get stuck in! Whether it was constructing leaves from willow sticks, adding a layer of papier mache to a giant monster, stripping colourful ribbons off sticks, or blowing up rugby balls, we all channeled our inner 8-year-old and had a great time.

We were sad to wrap up when the bell rang, but playtime wasn't over! We braved the chill wind to complete an 8 minute interval workout, and discovered that some playground equipment is a lot more challenging than it looks. Finally it was home time, and we ran our separate ways, with some of us making a detour to take in a fab view of the setting sun 🌞

Thanks everyone for a great task, looking forward to more sunny and (hopefully) warm sessions in the coming months 😎

6 Goodgymers made their way 7km to Moulsecoomb hall to assist in their volunteers day on Tuesday 9th April 2024.

We were provided with white paint for the walls and doors of the lobby of the building to help refresh the space and give it a bright welcome for visitors. The hall provides a much needed space for the local community to hire at affordable prices for weddings and parties but also for regular classes etc. We painted the foyer before a new carpet will be laid in a few days time.

We were then given pizza which we devoured before making our way back home. A warm welcome to “new” Pippa too.

This week GoodGym participates in the Food Bank Run initiative in different Areas across the country to the benefit of local food banks.

Many people are worried about having enough money to buy food, and likely there are several foodbanks across Brighton & Hove city. On this occasion, GoodGym Brighton helped Brighton Foodbank, the first and independent Christian food bank, established in Brighton and Hove in 2000. Since the pandemic, they record an increase of 30% in households needing their help, from 1 to 30+ households a week. In 2021, they gave out over 5 000 boxes of food, helping 1 223 people.

I have been always particularly keen to help local organisations, like Brighton FoodBank, to tackle food poverty, and I was very intrigued to contribute to the running of the daily operations of the Brighton FoodBank together with Nicky. So, together, we enthusiastically prepared several boxed of food, ready to be collected by the foodbank’s clients – which is open to the public Monday to Wednesday from 10am to 4pm.

And, last but not least, after hours of slightly frustrating waiting, the delivery of food purchased weekly finally arrived at 4pm – just on time to prove the benefit of GoodGym superpower in handling loading and downloading a cargo! GoodGym-ers contributed also by delivering donations of food, especially of tinned food plus something to make the foodbank clients smile – which is indeed always welcome!

Very long day 6 hrs getting people and runners flowing across a major road, some happy some not so. Two Runner's fell in a very large pot hole state of the roads are very dangerous but only two falls so quite lucky considering number of spectators/Runner's.