Life is better in running shoes

Wowzers ! What a turn out it was this evening! 16 yes 16 GoodGymers turned out on a damp but mild Monday evening.

With Belinda signing everyone in ( thank you) there was quite a buzz of banter from everyone. Together with Belinda there was also, in no particular order, Paula, Steve, Natacha, Sue , Barbara, Lucy, Ricky, John, Paul, Graham and Gill, Tamsin, Ros and Daisy.

This evenings task was at St Clare's Community hub which is a homeless shelter that supports rough sleepers in Worthing. It has recently changed from being a predominantly day centre to a night one too which is fantastic to support the local men, women and their dogs who are in need of winter food and shelter.

We arrived en masse at the centre to be met by the wonderful Amy who is the Volunteer Coordinator for Turning Tides and who I have known for many years. The new opening hours mentioned above do mean that the centre needs oodles of extra volunteers so, if you can spare a few hours and would like to be part of this amazing project please do contact Amy or me.

Our task this evening was to paint a small office that Amy and her colleague Ali have recently moved to at the hub. With such a big team present this evening in a relatively small area we split into two groups .

The first group headed out for a 15 minute run whilst the other headed upstairs to make a start on the painting. I was pretty sure that my timing and route instructions were clear. 7.5 minutes out in a straight line west along the seafront and then back again. What could possibly go wrong ?!

It was very blue'tiful

The hub were lucky enough to have recently been in receipt of multiple tins of paint donated by a local firm. Within this delivery was the cream paint that we used last week at Lyndhusrt Road together with tonights stunning magenta blue that was for the two feature walls in the office.

The team set about the task with their usual skill and energy. Amy (naturally) had everything very well organised so that we could get stuck in straight away. She also livened up proceedings with several facebook live feeds looking for plentiful likes and loves.

15 short minutes later some of the first team arrived back, as instructed, with precision timing followed by a swap of painting rollers and brushes with the tag team.

For others in the first group it wasn't so much a (metaphorical) passing of the baton but was more like a drip of rather sweaty and steaming runners arriving back in drabs as some appeared to have got lost along the way!

No paint no gain

After another short 15 minutes ( plus a bit more) of group painting we all reconvened downstairs and waited for the second team of runners to re appear in time for the final photo. Then we waited some more and a bit more too before they finally found their way back to the hub after what appears to be a very the confusing seafront route:)

Run ? I thought they said rum

After farewells to Amy and promises to return we then headed back to the prom for some more running.

After last week I was keen to promote some quality running drills this evening. With this in mind we embarked on a pyramid which escalated in 15 second increments up to 75 seconds and then came down again in the same increments finishing with several sets of 15s.

This drill was designed to promote speed and technique. We worked on arms, stride length and heel lifts together with the usual drive for more pace.

In a fun final few sets I set most of the group off 6 seconds in advance of Jay and Graham who were tasked with trying to get to the front of the pack very fast ! Despite the rain this seemed to go down really well and certainly put the fun into fitness together with a few roars of pure energy and determination from Graham.

We finished with some stretches and plans for Jay's 50th task next week ( which will involve a pub and eating cake) where, along with the celebrations, we will finalise our list of music and lyrics for our Christmas singing.

In other news

• If you would like to write some lyrics to some familiar tunes please bring hard copies along next week so we can all practice!

• The last run and good deed of the year will be Monday 16th December.

• If you haven't downlaoded Strava yet please ensure you do so in time for January. I would like Worthing to win the mileage challenge ! We were so close this year!