This Tuesday, GoodGym Brighton has been Running Out Of Time, and we made a few pledges to act together as a community for climate and nature!

On this lovely warm evening, ten GoodGym-ers ran 2km to the beach where we picked up litter grabbers and Surfers Against Sewage's sacks to collect the litter. We spread out along the beach towards the iconic i360 and up on the path above the beach finding plastic bottles, cans and wrappers, but not too much litter this time, which was good to see. Some tourists gave us their rubbish and one asked an unusual question, ‘Can you fly a drone on the beach?’ It was explained we were not the council (!), and just volunteers so weren’t really sure.

After the task, we ran to the square near the i360 for some fitness exercises. Stefania divided us into four groups for two circuits of four different exercises: squats, tricep dips, step ups and press ups. Although it was tiring, it was also great exercise!

On a bright and breezy evening following some rain, eleven enthusiastic GoodGymers laced up their running shoes and set off for another group run. This time, our mission was to dig into some gardening tasks at Moulsecoomb Allotments and plant some potatoes.

The uphill run to the allotments got us warmed up. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the sight of an overgrown plot desperately in need of some TLC, and Pippa already hard at work. Armed with spades, forks, and mattocks, we were ready to turn this patch from shabby to spud-tacular.

Our first task was to clear the weeds and debris that had taken over this section of the allotment. Everyone got down to earth, pulling up stubborn weeds and clearing the ground. Kudos to those who faced nettles, creepy crawlies, and stubborn pieces of buried debris - we even found and rescued a slow worm! With the ground clear, it was time to plant the potatoes. Each potato was carefully placed into the earth with mulch, spaced just right to give them room to grow.

After a quick tidy-up and a rescue of Stefania's lost phone, the once neglected plot was now a promising potato patch. With the sun beginning to set, we gathered our tools and prepared for the run back.

A thank you to all the runners who came out – you were all spud-tacular! And a warm welcome to Jemima and Isobel who joined us for their first Goodgym task.

Tonight twelve runners took the short run to one of our favourite local tasks. Why our favourite? Well it definitely has nothing to do with the free cakes on offer! We've been going to the Community Kitchen run by the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership since the kitchen began and they are always ready with some great cleaning tasks to get the kitchen ready for classes.

Amaryllis and Rosie set to the tough but rewarding job of bringing the ovens back to life, it was a grease ridden nightmare but they made them look fantastic by the end.

Jane started the evening in horror at the scale of mis matched utensils in cupboards, after calming down she soon made light work of the mess!

Fresh from their Worthing half-marathon heroics Angela and Ben polished up the dining table and chairs.

The rest of us busied ourselves with general cleaning around the kitchen until the whole place was sparkling! For all our hard work we were rewarded with some amazing cakes.

It was lovely to see some old faces tonight and big thank you to Frances for sharing the tasks around us all.

Six Good Gym runners helped local volunteers with setting up and running Spring in the Patch community festival. It was luckily mainly a dry April day for set-up until about half way through the event when it started raining unfortunately. Juliet (who is also a Patch volunteer committee member) ran the community mission. Sarah and Pippa helped with set-up which involved putting up tents, carrying boxes from the container, setting up the bar and tea tent. Sarah came back for another volunteer shift later collecting donations on the gate, the innovation of being able to now take card donations has really helped. Nikki and Michael joined later too for different shifts, both on the tea tent serving tea, coffee, cold drinks and a range of home-made delicious cakes. The event attracted about 300 people and had four bands, bar, tea tent, a range of stalls including craft, hair braiding, face painting, Green party, Labour party and activities such as yoga and archery. We event had a potential MP volunteering on the bar! It was a very successful event, despite the rain and the Good Gym volunteers made a big difference.