Ivy often felt that sometimes all you needle in life is GoodGym...

Finally, a lovely sunny (albeit incredibly windy and not quite like the Sydney-esk weather Julia and Nick are enjoying!) Monday evening! Tonight 8 GoodGym runners turned up for another fun-filled evening of puns, fitness and doing good! It was lovely to meet and welcome Christina along to her second group run, hopefully she will soon be the proud owner of lovely red GoodGym tee!

News

1. Well done to all the amazing and inspirational London Marathon runners yesterday. Tough conditions, big respect! There were 31 GoodGymers who took part and an epic GoodGym cheer squad down outside Somerset House, as well as at Deptford and Canary Wharf – what a buzz! However, there was some incredibly sad news that 29 year old, Matt Campbell collapsed at the 22.5 mile and never regained consciousness. #finishformatt – in memory of Matt, many are running 3.7 miles to complete his marathon for him and donating to the charity he was running for, the Brathay Trust: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mattcampbell-londonmarathon. If you can, please get involved and share.
2. The annual Good Gym Olympics has been announced for Saturday 30th June at Parliament Hill Track...100m, Egg and Spoon race, it will be a lot of fun! – reckon we can get a GoodGym Worthing team together?!
3. Sunday 13th May - Flower bed planting volunteers are needed for our huge planter (No.41) outside the Pavilion - lots of red flowers have been ordered I hear!

I’ve been winging it for a year

Before heading off the gang surprised me with a special gift to celebrate my 100th good deed last week – it was an incredible needle felted ‘mini Beth’ (admittedly not far from being life-size!) made by Belinda's husband John. Wow! A year has flown by and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting so many great people and discovering some wonderful community projects. I cannot thank everyone I have met over the last year enough for their friendship, support, and for all the fun! Thank you!

Time to step up

After a quick warm-up outside Splashpoint we headed 2km west via the Town Centre to help the Stepping Stones Project with some gardening. In accordance with its name The Stepping Stones Project acts as a stepping stone between hostel life and permanent housing and is part of the Worthing Churches Homeless Project.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Ivy no idea who you are?!

Two rings of the doorbell, a knock on the door and a couple of confused faces…this wasn’t in the script, it appeared that they had forgotten about us! However, after a couple of quick calls we were greeted by Trevor who gave us access to all the tools we needed to make a start on the overgrown and ivy-filled garden. Everyone chose their tool/weapon of choice and quickly set about weeding and clearing. Now I am no gardener but one thing I have learned over the past year is that ivy don’t half spread fast, and everywhere….walls, trellises, flower beds, the lot!

Gone with the wind

Over the half an hour we had spent at the task the wind had really began to pick-up, and it really was not conducive for gardening…clippings and cuttings everywhere! But as usual a fantastic and efficient gardening effort and tidy-up was done by all. We quickly posed for a team selfie before beginning our run back to Splashpoint – Anne even managed to sneak a quick minute’s warm-up in the conservatory!

Circuits by SMS numbers

We headed east along the promenade on our 3km run back to the green near Splashpoint. All along the promenade the team managed to get in some excellent wind assisted lamppost sprint work and a short time later we arrived at the green, which was no longer a bog – perfect for a lovely circuit session! The team paired up and completed the ‘SMS circuit’ session, this involved everyone completing the corresponding exercise to their SMS number (for example, 0 = 30 x burpees – since I knew they all loved them so much!!) followed by a short 10m jog after each exercise. Once everyone’s SMS numbers had been completed we headed back to the shelter at Splashpoint for a quick cool down and stretch, before saying our goodbyes.

Next week’s task is “Bug Cycle” Sign-up here which was one of my favourite tasks last year – if you haven’t been here before, well all I will say is that there’s a lot of spare tyres! There will also be a social afterwards, rumour is that it's someone's 50th...

Hopefully see you all next week, big thank again for my surprise and as always, for your company and hard work. Great effort all round!