Poles apart ? No we are all white

Bank Holiday Birthday Bash

What a delight it was to welcome Portsmouth GG trainer Katie together with fellow Portsmouth run leader Sam in pursuit of the tourist badge.

To come to GG on your Birthday must also be deserving of a badge . Kudos and best wishes to Nick We all know you didn't have much choice in the matter ( ha ha) but hoped that you enjoyed the fun and celebrations tonight.

Fellow bank holiday revellers boys John, Paul, Snowflake,Steve also joined us.

Representing the remainder of the girls Belinda with special mention to Michelle Lovely to see you again.

Also extra special mention to Barbara who basically cheered the whole of GG today and got her badger badge. Well done Barbara who is also on her 47th task !

With introductions done and poles assembled ready for painting we did a quick warm up on the green including inchworms , press ups, burpees, sprinter lunges and squat jumps before heading off for a breezy warm up run.

Noodles before canoodling

We headed off towards the pier and briefly convened at our flowerbed to admire how good it is shaping up. Massive thanks to Johnfor all his hard work on the silhouette figures that he has made and had to remake, due to recent damage caused ( not from the weather!)

I will be putting a shout out for some help with the care, maintenance and watering of the bed over the coming months so that we can authentically call it a team flower bed :)

After several laps of the pier we headed to the beach where we ran across the stones and up and over the breakwaters . We did have to offer several apologies to the couple who were peacefully eating their take away noodles and hoping for some privacy. Imagine their pleasure with 11 pairs of legs trampling within inches of them :):):)

A plank a day keeps the belly away ?

Back on the green and nicely warmed up we decided to crack on with the fitness before the task and final run.

As Nick is a twin and his star sign is Gemini the theme was working in pairs with a series of activities including ladder runs, burpees, standing long jumps, shuttle runs,with mandatory high fives combined with general team encouragement and press up penalties!

We also incorporated a great plank game instigated by Steve . A tough ab and core workout with plenty of back chat and collapsed bellies! Check out the photos :)

We finished with a hopping team relay game which incorporated balance together with power focusing on working on the strength of each ankle and leg together with some healthy competition and heckling!

Touching up time

And so to the task for the evening. We were helping our parkrun friends smarten up 20 finishing funnel pole markers with a coat of white hammerite paint.

This is the point of the evening where we combined a good deed with some GG worthing team naughtiness. Dodgy but funny innuendo, one liners were rolled out faster than the painting. None are repeatable in print but all are memorable!

During the task Katie and Sam did some recruiting for Portsmouth with Jay signing up for a Wednesday task on the promise of 'lots of girls' Good luck you two . Lets hope 'Mum' Lucy can be there to keep an eye on him !

After the painting we finished with a short but sweet final 2k with 10 bonus burpees before stretching and one final epic (unrepeatable) unintentional one liner from John which resulted in a plethora of giggles and raised eyebrows.

And finally to the pub....

Have your cake and eat it

We all went to he pub where we had refreshments and homemade chocolate cakes that I had whipped up for Nick . Snowflake ate 5,drank 2 pints of cider and ran home announcing it was 'sick' We assume he meant awesome and not actually sick !

What lovely vibes for our bank holiday bash it was! Great turn out, loads of laughs and lovely to welcome the tourists. We hope you and lots of others can join in with our June challenge and BIG social on 30th June.

Looking forward to next Monday already !

Love your running, jalking and walking

Julia X