First of all a big warm Wednesday welcome to Dave who joined us for his first run tonight! We had record breaking numbers so HUGE thanks to everyone for coming out and Egg for making a special appearance as well as a return from Penny & Frankie who last joined us a year ago at this trip to Naomi House. Please come back again this year!

After our intro and a quick warmup we headed south to St Swithuns school where we were greeted by the ever-organised caretaker, Chris. He provided a whole new level of task organisation and delegation with carefully masked out areas for painting, notes on what needed doing and other notes of other jobs. Impressive!

The group of nearly 30 strong were split into different tasks - many taking up painting jobs, while others took on buffing the floors (or wrestling with the buffer in India and Pippa's case), cleaning carpets, wiping down tables, and other tasks Chris could find for us. The "buff" group in the hall added a whole level of exercise to their task, undertaking the lunge and squirt method of floor cleaning. There was lots of laughter and lots of tasks were completed saving Chris 18+ hours of work, so he was very grateful for our help!

We headed back north to the community centre, some of the Southsea lot split off, while the rest headed back to take part in a fitness session of squats, glute exercises, press ups, rows and single leg squats.

Another wonderful Wednesday!

Don't forget there is a community mission on Thursday evening and the Southsea Parkrun takeover on Saturday morning where many familiar faces will be volunteering and donning our red t-shirts! All the listings can be found here

Hope to see you soon!

Lots of ANNOUNCEMENTS tonight, so in case you weren't listening, here they are again:

• well done to the team who helped out at Baffins at the weekend, we got some really great feedback from the task owner
• we have a community mission on Saturday and if you get up early enough you can get Southsea parkrun in first - fancy dress beach theme to celebrate my 100th! Bring your red tshirt for afterwards
• I'm going to visit GoodGym Poole next Tuesday, I'll have a couple of spaces in the car so give me a shout if you want to come along too
• Next week's run includes a 1km time trial as part of the GoodGym Olympics Nationwide challenge and a curry afterwards
• There's a community mission next Thursday (1st) followed by dinner for Maura's birthday and a training run led by Maxine on Friday (2nd) - it's all happening!
• Sign up to everything that you want to get involved in - hopefully all the links work! There are also community missions next weekend - you have the possibility of 4 good deeds in 5 days!

And now, here's what happened tonight

We had no new runners tonight but we welcomed back Jay (aka Snowflake) from GG Worthing again & gave him the challenge of trying to remember everyone's name! In return, he was given life wisdom (!?) from GG Portsmouth... let's hope it helps!

There were a number of new t-shirts on display tonight (seems like the new system at Mailout is working well, check out their story here) I was sporting my 100 and Maura & Rachel got to style out the black 50 tees. Rachel finally got to wear the good deeds cap too... on good deed 53!

We headed south to St Swithun's school, met Tracey at the traffic lights and arrived at the school quite a lot hotter than we started! Lots and lots of very British chats about the weather and tips for staying cool or complaints about the lack of air con in work places.

As always, Chris was super organised. Toni and Sam were put to work shifting chairs and tables into a skip. I think the photo of Toni should be her GG profile pic, what do you reckon? Judy, Maura, Jo and Rosie were painting the gates and everyone else was inside painting the music room in very bright blue and yellow. Towards the end of the task there was a panic to finish off one corner of the room which resulted in Jen accidently painting Lucy and then Lucy returning the favour, yellow noses are so this season!

We headed into Wimbledon park for a quick game of evolution (Angela's favourite!) - some great amoeba, crocodile, T-rex and man impressions and a surprising number who made it to be Darwin. Lots of laughs as usual followed by a speedy run back where we spread out a bit but all got back in time for ice lollies - which are, let's face it, an essential part of summer runs.

Hope to see you all again soon for another good deed or two!

2 welcomes tonight:

First, welcome Maxine to her first GoodGym run and good deed. She adds to our complement of international runners and we're pleased that she's chosen the right City to live in!

We also welcome back Dr Jo who has been very busy whilst "disengaged" (her words!) from GoodGym - she's got married AND passed her FRCPath exams which only 25% of people actually pass. Wow! CONGRATULATIONS JO! She also told me that she's staying around in the area too so hopefully we will get to see her more regularly again at our runs.

BIG NEWS:

TONIGHT WE HIT OUR 1000 GOOD DEEDS

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of that so far. More fuss will be made on the social media channels tomorrow!

Anyway, back to the run report. After a quick headcount, the speedy splinter team of Jo (North), Dr Jo and Charlotte headed off to the Rec to meet Anna from Fratton Big Local and get sanding off some more parkletics graffiti - we will win the battle of marker pen vs sandpaper!

The rest of us had a little warm up followed by a run down to St Swithuns School via 2 parks and a lot of road crossings! When we got there Chris had been busy setting up for us - paint and rollers were out, equipment was ready and carpets were covered. He is always so organised, which is great.

Jen learnt a new skill and got to use the floor polisher in the school hall. Judy nominated herself as carpet cleaner and got to use the Rug Doctor. Vicki had recovered from the shock of seeing me in her bedroom at 0730 this morning (via BBC South Today!) and somehow resisted the urge to do a George Formby impression whilst cleaning the windows. Everyone else was on painting duty which included some impressive squeezing into small spaces from Angela and Rosie. Rachel managed to keep her new trainers looking new (phew!) and Mel & Maura managed to keep the paint on the walls.

As usual the time passed by ever so quickly. To make sure no-one missed out on the "fun" we did our fitness session in Wimbledon park with some quick agility relays before the lure of home and food was too much for the local residents! This is where we found out that Dr Jo, Charlotte and Maxine are an awesome team who have epic hop and jump skills!

As I mentioned at the start of the run, there are LOADS of non-Wednesday good deeds coming up so have a look on the website and come along to join in the fun! Hope to see lots of you at the Fitness Festival on Saturday - here's a link to their website so you can see what else is happening in addition to our 2 opportunities for good deeds!

Firstly, a big welcome to newcomers Rachel and Adam. Lovely to meet you both tonight and we hope to see you again soon.

Welcome back to Elly who's been doing lots of crazy long distance races since we saw her last and good to see Sophie and Luke again - hope your colds are better soon!

Tonight we had an indoor task at St Swithuns. Chris the caretaker had done loads of prep for us and had paintbrushes, rollers, pots, trays and all important floor coverings ready and waiting for us. Plus some much needed squash!

We set to work painting the hallway and a large classroom with the classic colour magnolia. Lots of good team work - cutting in by some, rolling & filling in by others, tall people doing the high bits and a couple of people even braving the ladder to reach the very edges. Laura was very excited to find a world map (spot the geographer). Special mention to Judy for painting herself the most out of the whole group - hopefully it's going to wash out of that nice new GG T-shirt!

Everyone seems to be getting fitter and we are getting to and from tasks quicker now so we had a chance for some traffic light lunges - well done to Adam for his enthusiastic jump lunges.

We've got lots coming up in the next week or so, hope to see you there:

• Beach clean community mission on Saturday

• Our usual Wednesday group run for #runandtalk week PLUS

• Additional #runandtalk session on Thursday from the Coffee Cup at Eastney - a little earlier so we have time to enjoy a drink afterwards

We also have the Great South Run social **AND ** I am planning a bit of a Great British Bake Off / halloween theme for 31 October... watch this space!

Happy Running! Katie

Firstly, a big warm welcome to GoodGym Portsmouth to Judy, Nick and Alison. Lovely to have you join us today. Please tell others about us and share/follow our social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Tonight we headed south to St Swithuns School to a task that happened because Maura's son attends the school and she told them all about us. Thank you Maura! The caretaker, Chris, had thought about all the different jobs he wanted us to do and came up with a great selection:

• Tim was up a ladder removing door handles, then sanding them and painting them
• Tony and Nick were digging over a raised beds and then planting an olive tree and a camellia
• Angela donned the Ghostbuster-esque backpack for some leaf blowing
• Sam and Mel scraped the old paint of the gate to ready it for painting
• Maura and Alison cleared the flowerbeds of fallen leaves and swept up
• Jo K and Sophie cut back a rogue blackberry bush and sampled a couple of berries on the way
• Jo C and Judy dug over the other raised bed and Jo rescued a sycamore tree and ran it all the way back to Fratton to take home
• Rob got the indoor task and was put in charge of the Rug Doctor to clean the carpets

Wow - lots of work done as ever by the team. Chris was so impressed that he's invited us back again! We were rewarded with a drink of squash before heading back to the community centre. We missed out on doing too many fitness moves as no-one wanted to leave the task (I think you do it on purpose!). Hopefully Daryl will have some nice ones up his sleeve for you next week!

So same time, same place next week just a different face in charge for one week only! You're heading north the Naomi House to help in the charity shop again - it was great fun last time so back to finish what you started. Sign up here

Have a fab fortnight and keep on running.

Katie :)