Our first festive task of this season brought a little bit of joy to plenty of GoodGymers this evening. We joined volunteers at Baffins Pond Association to put up the Christmas Decorations around the compound.

Everyone got in the spirit and there were plenty of super Christmas jumpers, hats and leggings on display.

Wilson's commitment to detail extended to all of the little statues in the compound who are now sporting very dapper Christmas bow-ties!

The compound looked absolutely fantastic by the time we were done - Christmas basically threw up over Baffins Pond this evening.

We welcomed Lily back to GoodGym after some time away this evening - lovely to have you back again, Lily!

Many hands made light work of our leaflet drop. Splitting up in to small teams, we got through our stack of flyers so quickly we even had time for a cheeky drink in a local pub garden.

I think more time was spent trying to come up with a Madness related pun as the event we were promoting included a Madness Tribute Band... "Claggy Trousers" as it got rather warm... it turns out our Ska Music knowledge wasn't really up to much!

First up, was the greatly anticipated Golden Trainer....

1km, definitely no watches, predict your time, run or walk (or both), closest to their predicted time wins.

Here are the results from this year:

1. John 1 second faster than predicted
2. Jo 6 seconds faster
3. India 10 seconds slower

India and Sasha were the only two who went slower than their predictions.... everyone else underestimated their ability or (more likely) the effect of a bit of "friendly" competition and a stopwatch on their speed!

The full set of results can be seen as an image in the photos.

Part 2 - litter picking

The good deed part of the evening involved a litter pick around Kingston Rec, always a rich hunting ground for discarded items. Rachel was keen to find the usual items to really know that she was back in Pompey - there was definitely plenty of cigarette butts and a few full poo bags but did we find any clothing?

Other gems included a "diamond" (useful for proposing to a dog apparently), a broken brollie, a moped in a bush, half an avatar figure and a plastic crocodile. Find of the night was a Barbie who had a lot more street cred than any Barbie I owned when I was a kid, she matched Jen's outfit pretty well but had 1 more shoe than normally seen on Jen!

Many bags of litter and one bag of recycling were collected. Thanks to Vicki for taking the recycling back to her green bin.

We met up with Anna from Fratton Big Local and a couple of the friends of Kingston Rec who'd been doing a great job picking up litter in the park area. Anna brought snacks so once the golden trainer winner had been announced, easy peelers and biscuits were passed round and shared.

Great job by everyone. And lots of good pics tonight too (apologies that I didn't get everyone in action, I thought you'd probably be more interested in me pressing the stopwatch at the correct point!!).

Our week of celebrations continued with a glorious evening out on the water kayaking.

With zero capsizes, only a couple of minor beachings and seven glorious seals to spot a marvellous evening was had by all.

GoodGym crafters put their designs skills to great use, creating bunting for GoodGym Portsmouth's 5th birthday party.

So many individual styles and decorations!

Photos of the finished bunting to follow....

I managed to get the bike tyre out of the tree on great salterns.

Wasn't a huge amount of litter around the pond! Mostly fag butt's and sweet wrappers. Was nice to get out in the sun shine!