We welcomed some lovely new runners tonight with a Starter Session to create a new wildflower meadow at St Nicks.

St Nicks is an amazing nature reserve built on the site of a former landfill. To turn parts of that into a wildflower meadow though, is tough going. The thick, tussocky grass needed digging up, along with a layer of topsoil. Jonathan (the Reserve Manager) gave us a demo of how to do this effectively with spades and mattocks.

Whenever Jonathan demonstrates anything he makes it look effortless. So everybody started very confidently and quickly realised how hard it actually was. We got into a flow though, with people taking breaks to have a go at scything in another part of the meadow.

Soon enough, the wheelbarrows were filling up with thick layers of turf and soil. There were lots of tiny celebrations every time someone got a really good bit up and some hard efforts with extremely heavy wheelbarrows!

After 45 minutes of hard work, we'd cleared a decent patch and our reward was to rake it all over and sow some wildflower seeds, finishing up with pressing and stomping the seeds into the raked soil.

Fitness Time!

The focus of the fitness session was on making the joints strong for running. We used hurdles to do a series of great ankle strengthening and balance exercises before breaking into a circuit session, including:

• squats
• walking lunges
• resistance sprints
• hopping drills
• glute bridges
• reverse lunges
• can-cans

We'll be heading back to St Nicks for another Starter Session on the 7th October, come and join us!

Mrs L's friend met us at the flat and showed us around, explaining the situation. We quickly got our heads together with a survey of the space and a plan of action! We decided that the 2 armchairs and the sofa should be moved to the bedroom to make space for Mrs L's hospital bed but we could reshuffle the other furniture in the lounge so that she would still have some home comforts around her.

There was a bit of Chuckle brothers "to-me-to-you" with moving the sofas but we were commended with how smoothly we got them through the doorways! We also used our Tetris skills to store the armchairs in the bedroom to save space. Throughout we tried to think about keeping things within easy reach for Mrs L and not block her wardrobes. The furniture didn't take long to move and we left a good space for the hospital bed. After a quick vacuum of the carpets, the task was complete and we were on our way.

Wow ! We totally raked it in tonight !

Sunshine , sunset, smashing out good deeds with a hoe and saying a swift hello to Sammy swan

A small but determined group of GoodGym Worthing runners set off on a glorious spring evening in Sunny Worthing.

We arrived at Windsor Lawns to be met by the team from The Conservation Volunteers and we set about our task with great gusto and enthusiasm and fun banter.

The transformation from scruffy weeds to slick soil had to be seen to be believed! Check out the photos to see the achievements.

We then had a beautiful 4 mile run along the seafront around Brooklands lake where we stopped for photo opportunities. Big cheer to new runner and photographer Ed for leading on the photos. We finished off we a fun fitness session at the outdoor gym at Windsor lawns . We waved a goodbye to Tess who was visiting from Brighton and really hope we will see you again soon. Also a special mention to Martin who was under the weather today and couldn't make it today. We missed you !