Don't Hamper Santa's Progress 🎅 📦

Firstly, welcome to America who joined us for the first time tonight! Great to have you join us.

Tonight we squeezed into the community centre in amongst a church get together and a big catering job for the cafe - it was quite hectic!

We headed out to warm up in the car park area, in a very small "sausage shaped circle" - OK I know that's not a shape! Following a headcount a few warm up moves we ran en masse down Fratton Road like a big red cavalry complete with festive hats sparkling in the lamppost light.

We arrived at the foodbank just as Ian came down to open the door - perfect timing. We had a special job just for us, to pack the Christmas donations into Hampers for the local hostels and charities. Ian had left us 30 boxes. We packed them up in a record amount of time, human chains, lifting and shifting and making sure everyone's hamper had at least one selection box in it. As there was still a lot of food left, Ian then went off to find more boxes and folding crates and we ended up packing almost 60 hampers.

Maura was doing sterling work as photographer at the same time at packing the boxes. Laura and Judy were going crackers with the crackers. We almost lost Rosina into a pile of crates and Manuel ended up with the job of collating the empties. Great work and plenty of festive cheer from everyone.

Tracey let us know about her 50th parkrun which will be on 21st December at Southsea - wear festive gear or spots. She's listed it here. Tracey also came up with the run report title so bonus points there for her :)

Fun fact of the evening... the Tesco collection weekend (which we helped out with) resulted in SIX TONNES of food for the Foodbank - epic!

We headed out of the Foodbank feeling a little bit hungry after seeing all the festive fayre. Luckily Angela had brought a box of Celebrations for us to share after the run so we could give in to our sugar cravings...

But first, there was this week's fitness task. It's new name is punching Judy but I do have to add that we didn't actually punch Judy! In the subway (so we could see what we were doing) it was a resistance bands paired exercises of twists, pulls and pushes (or punches). Great work by all - hope you don't feel it too much tomorrow!

Next week is the last group run of the year. We're running to Naomi House to help with a shop sort out and then going back to the community centre to share some food. There's a spreadsheet so you can add what you're bringing or have a look at what there is to look forward to!

See you then. Happy Running.