Just about a year ago Nipun moved to Brighton and rightly identified Goodgym as a great way to get to know people, get fit, do good and discover the wonderful city we live in. 36 good deeds and 12 months later, Nipun has become a much loved part of Brighton Goodgym, even being promoted to the dizzy heights of ‘social secretary’. And in her final task in the role she organised her own leaving do where we broke all records with an amazing 18 people staying on to say farewell. Nipun’s career as social secretary has not been entirely plain sailing. Although she does seem to have a great skill of seeking out Brighton’s coolest places to eat and drink she also seems to have an uncanny ability to book places where the chef has already gone home! So tonight 'Ohso Social’ were ‘OhSo sorry’ they missed our booking and sent the chef home early, but it didn’t put any dampers on the evening as we went somewhere else, forgotten the name already!

But before all the social stuff we were delighted to be joined by Laura and Julian for the first time, and also to break 20 good deeders for the first time since early January. Cllr David Gibson was well prepared and deployed most of the group around the ward of Hanover & Elm Grove to paint and spray over graffiti on walls, bins & junction boxes. Our previous painting tasks have been incredibly effective at reducing the amount of scribbling in the area so mostly it was applying the top coat to our previous efforts.

Meanwhile the rest of the group were tasked with litter picking and weeding the planted area in front of the Percy Wagner Almshouses. Again we have made a huge difference here over the year or so we have been coming with the amount of litter greatly reduced so our main effort was on tackling the jungle of bindweed. We pulled the stuff out by the arm full hopefully giving the shrubs underneath a chance to breathe and grow strong through the summer.

Tonight's fitness session took a bit of explaining but we got there in the end! An assembly line of partnered exercises using each other to jump over, dip from and provide resistance.

Just a reminder about The Weakest Link next Wednesday. Full details here, I highly recommend it as a fun night of running and mingling with Brighton’s runners.

So farewell Nipun, it's been great to have you and your positive energy around for the last year. Good luck with your new job and all the best with Goodgym Richmond. Hopefully we'll see you at a social event or race before too long. Oh and anyone want to be our new Social Secretary??!!

A big Goodgym welcome to Michelle joining us for the first time tonight.

Following a short sharp uphill 1k we arrived just in time to do battle with a springtime weed explosion at the lovely but slightly jungly Sloane Court last night, guided by residents Tony and Liz. There was a little topiary to do in Liz’s garden (insert your own Tony-style double entendre here) but most of us were so engrossed in the weeds that we could have happily spent all evening there in the sunshine. But then we would have missed our PT sesh in equally lovely Queen’s Park with umpteen varieties of plank and hopping. As it was monthly social night, we took our cores of steel back downhill into town for a well-earned burger and pint at the Black Lion.

A big Brighton Goodgym welcome to Clare & Daniel joining us for the first time tonight, its great to have you along and we hope we’ll see you again. It was also good to see Madeleine back after a few months off. Welcome back!

And a huge Brighton Goodgym Congratulations to Sherman who has reached the amazing milestone of 50 good deeds. That’s a fantastic achievement and he now joins a select club of only a few Brighton Goodgymmers to have reached the magic 50! We look forward to seeing you in your black t-shirt next week! And I wonder who will be next?!

Just a a short run to our task tonight where we met David from the St James’s Community Action Team. They have received some funding from Pride in the Community to refresh some large raised beds at the bottom of Upper Rock Gardens, but before they replant them, they needed some soil improver added to get the new plants off to the best start. So armed with shovels, spades and forks our task was to shift and shovel a half tonne of muck into the raised beds. As it was a small working area we split into 2 groups with one group working whilst the other ran around the block before swapping over. After about 20 minutes we’d got the job done, leaving the beds ready for planting, I look forward to seeing how they look in a few days once they've been planted up.

With plenty of time for a fitness session we headed to Dorset Gardens for a session all about agility and plyometrics. First we took on the Illinois agility test, designed to bring out those nimble, sprightly and fast feet as you negotiated some tight turns and weaved your way through a course of cones.

Next we had a series of plyometric relay races jumping and hopping over cones, which produced some nail biting photo finishes between the 2 evenly matched teams. Plyometrics are great exercises for runners, anything with small, light hops and jumps is fantastic for strengthening muscles and tendons and helping you develop a spring in your step to get those feet moving quickly when you run.

Hopefully see some of you at our monthly parkrun meet up this Saturday where we will need maximum spring in our step to get us up that lovely big hill. Breakfast at The Bevy after!