Litter-ally a run in the park

Another fun packed night at GoodGym Portsmouth!

Tonight, we welcomed Chrissy to her first run (give her a cheer!) and welcomed back Laura who has been on maternity leave. She also brought Jack along to meet us, sporting his lovely GoodGym vest (I think this should be your GG profile pic)! We look forward to welcoming him as a member in about 18 years!

After the joy of the evolution game last week we just had to play again so that was our warm up while the walking group put in the curry order then headed for the Rec.

We met up with Anna and a few others from the Friends of Kingston Rec group to pick litter, mostly in the play area but also around the fences and hedges in the park. Interesting finds tonight included a teddy (zebra / horse?), some false teeth (ewww) and a bugging device (as decided by Vicki at least!)

Durante el trabajo Adam, Kat y Maura hablaron en Espanol por 20 minutos! Muy bien, muy inteligente! Prometí algo de español en el informe. Gracias Google Translate!!!

Connie from the Package Free Larder was out walking her dog and picking up a few bottles on the way round, she was very impressed with what we were up to and stopped to tell us about their crowdfunding to bring a packaging free shop to Portsmouth. Have a look at their page here - only 7 days left to help make this a reality!

Once we had regrouped and had a few pictures, it was time for the 1km time trial - 2 laps of the park, carefully measured and chalk marked!! Big thank you to my beautiful assistant tonight, Laura, who was chief cheerer and gave out the finishing tokens. This was part of the Nationwide GoodGym Olympics. So, if you're on Strava and fancy entering yourself into the prize draw, check out all the details here - there are various hashtags to include in the description.

As I was working out who was closest to their predicted time, the brave group members were challenged to build a human pyramid. This was for 2 reasons, 1. (most important) in honour of Louisa who is off to represent Team UK in the World Tchouckball Championships in Malaysia. GOOD LUCK LOUISA! We look forward to hearing all about it on your return 2. so we have a photo to enter in the 1km time trial competition!

THE GOLDEN TRAINER Last year's winner of the golden trainer, Jo ran 5 seconds quicker than her predicted time and so had to hand on the custody of the golden trainer to another GoodGymer for 2019. As ever, lots of you underestimated how fast you could run 1km, have more faith in yourselves! However, the final result was super close this year, with 2 people running just 2 seconds slower than their predicted times. This meant we had to go down to the milliseconds to decide it and India was victorious. Well done India! Congratulations / commiserations to runner up Angela, SO close (0.45 seconds)!

Also, Happy Birthday / Feliz Compleanos to Maura for tomorrow!!

Dhansak Queen All runners love a good feed and most of us stayed behind afterwards to be treated to the curry pun above from Jo and to sample some more delights from Paanchi, the local takeaway - always a good option!

Upcoming things to get involved in... And finally, there's lots coming up before we meet for our next group run, hope to see you at some of them!

• If you want to do another 1km time trial or try the 1km alphabet challenge, the opportunity is there for one more day!
• Training run in Havant on Friday
• Beach clean at Southsea on Saturday morning
• Litter pick (followed by coffee / brunch) at Great Salterns on Sunday

We also have a team of 5 travelling to Parliament Hill for the GoodGym Olympics on Saturday, we hope to do Portsmouth proud! (I also hope not to break my ankles during the bucket stilt race!)