OH Good Cupboardraawwyy!!

On yet another cold Tuesday night a dedicated team of hardcore goodgymers ran one of our longer runs that we do, to the edge of mousclecomb and back once again to help the good volunteers at the Good News Centre at the hillview centre in Mousclecomb. (first right after the primary school) We congratulated Michael, Helena, David, Roy & Tara (and Tabitha who was having a night off) on their completion and good day had at the maverick event series race in Amberely last weekend as one of the top 10 races in the UK and 3 rd hardest within goodgym, with Tara being gracefull and not mentioning that she came first on the longer 14mile format of the race. With these good chills running down our backs, we set off from our base at the YHA Brighton at the Old Steine in two tiers of abilities into the night with Michael leading and tara as back- marker, full of steam all the way up Lewes road at a good steady and constant pace from some of our faster runners! Where Helena & Frances met us at the centre alongwith a fire engine….!? ALL WAS WELL! Turned out to be nothing serious as they probably also thought that there must have been a fast moving fire coming up the hill somehow from all the last minutue fumes that were coming from atop of our runners heads on a last minute dash effort up the rather steep incline of a hill before getting to the halveway point of 4.5km at the centre. Where we then met sometimes goodgymer Sean and his other community centre leaders and decided that finishing off our white wall would have been pointless due to the rain washing it off later but the murial looks fabulous and he introduced the centre’s ethos and its purpose as a community hub and charity base run building which gets only a sprinkle of funding help from the council so they encourage the community to run workshops from it and lend a hand where they can aswell as giving donations which are re-distributed back into supermarkets and generally gradually giving the whole place a big makeover so that it can have more function rooms and become evenmore of a man-cave than it already is, as an all- round ‘’good news’’ (please excuse the second cheesy pun!) opportunity aswell as centre for the community, running other courses and drop-ins for anyone as friendly individuals. Helena, Frances & Angela got stuck right into the centre’s main utility cupboard and pretty much cleaned up shop, giving it the full works with a mop, organise & dust with Sean. The rest of our brighton team decided to become wiping wizards and piled into the centre’s kitchen with our yellow gloves a-ready, as what ended up happening was complete wiiizaarddyyy I do say dear boys and girls! Date checking all the cularinary/grocery items, disinfecting and wiping down all of thier halve a dozen cupboards and surfaces & even sofia spending extra time wiping out the fridge. Sean was once again overwhelmed at our efforts and thanked us greatly for helping him get the centre ready and sparkly, in-time for their health & safety regulators check as he wants to pass, before we were getting ready to head back out into typical british weather for the second halve of our haul, we put provisional dates in the diary for another visit back to the centre in good due time to finish the murial and kitchen there (our fingers are crossed for him and we wish him the best!) The hardcore team trojoned on chatting away back down lewes road, with mid-run loop reps from our elite where we’d double-back on ourselves between two set points by tara, allowing for high interval sprints to be had, before we hit the rush of the city again, for the last 4.5km back to the YHA for warmth and cool water that always awaits us there  with some peeling off on-route back to their respectitive homes as its closer for them, massive effort and performance from all was had, with the faster runners steaming ahead and myself keeping back mark as no-one gets left behind at goodgym as we look after eachother here! We managed to finish before the first of our winter snow sleet hit us tonight though and goodgym brighton is heading back to the hove promenarde next Tuesday at 18:15 from the YHA Brighton, (where we meet round to the right of the reception and is a room that gets locked by the staff there, to put away any heavier valuables etc you may have) to meet the groundsman, collect spades and buckets and sweep up the peebles from the parkrun route area so that people can run along the beach on Saturdays as the intensity of the waves pushes a vast amount (probably more than you think) of pebbles right up onto the promenarde. Keep up all the Running and hard work you’re all putting in, as its having a massive impact to the community & is all counting towards Brighton Goodgym’s janaury deed & distance challenge,competing with other cities! Hope to see you on another run, Regards your newly velged brighton taskforce member Damian!