Whilst Melanie was away on a(nother) parkrun adventure, GoodGym Bristol were back in Queen Square preparing to run or walk to the City Centre.

Brief lap around the Redcliff section of the floating Harbour to get some distance in before nipping into Broadmead for BHF to help get Lexi's weekly distance on target. Limited random finds in the depths of BHF’s clothes hanging room this week (boo!). Frances brought along amazing biscuits to celebrate her 52nd GoodGym session (copyright Richard B)

The air was cool and full of promise. Our intrepid heroes stepped out into the night unsure of what the night would bring. Step followed step as we made our way to the F of BH. Warmth glorious warmth was the cry as we arrived. We signed our names like rockstars and made our way up. Clothes meet hangers, hangers meet clothes. A match made in heaven, or hell, when used underwear was found (play scream noises). Fine biscuits were provided by Lady Frances before we made our merry way into the night. (copyright Richard G)

This will be updated by someone who was there, by the method of you leaving a comment and hopefully we can build some sort of timeline of the fun that happened, and I'll transfer the sentences to the story here :-)

It was lovely to have Lucy join is from Newcastle for the second time, and she's obviously a big draw as she backmarked the walking group of nine GoodGymmers - thanks, Lucy! That left the Richards as the run group - B leading and G backmarking with much debate about the running route (shortest route won, not sure which is the shortest Richard).

The British Heart Foundation staff were ready and waiting for us with a few tasks lugging stuff around but mainly hanging clothing donations from bags which were taking over a stock room.

Many quality finds were made (with photographic evidence and Frances celebrated her 50th good deed by searching for bare bottoms which turned out to be bear bottoms of kids PJs. Marianne showed she was down with the kids by identifying Bluey on a set of PJs, apparently a very well-thought-of kids' programme - news to us.

Richard B found the do(d)giest item, from which he tried to distance himself, It's Christmas Doggy-Style fancy dress for a small dog.

Chloe didn't know her own strength as a hanger broke apart in her hands (honest!) and Phill, Jason and Lucy rose to the challenge of needing some strong people to move items from downstairs to somewhere else. They even found us again in the warren that is the upper two floors of the store - very impressive.

Alice found the perfect scary tiger top to go with Richard G's bottoms and Ed triumphed in finding the best hat for the end-of-task photo - pink sequins are IN!

With agreement to carry on next week and other tasks needing our attention in the store, we're already looking forward to being out of the cold next week, and enjoying more chat during the run/walk/task/workout afterwards.

And if you'd like to know more about Vote for Pedro Ive done the hard work for you!

The British Heart Foundation in Broadmead received more than 6,000 bags of donations from the students leaving Bristol at the start of the summer. Unsurprisingly, they are still sorting them!

We arrived to donate some human power this Saturday morning. We were greeted with 7 floor to ceiling metal crates filled with bags of donations. Our task? To go through as many of them as we could and decide whether it was sellable or for recycling.

It was a treasure trove of finds, with several witch outfits, several Harry Potter outfits and memorabilia, and who could forget the dentist polo neck?! Of course, there were lots of great donations as well, which will hopefully raise some much needed funds for the BHF.

Two hours later, we had hammered through six of the crates! We were pleased with that and headed home, much dustier than when we arrived and having gained a few items we just had to buy.

Until next time!

The big BHF shop in the city centre have been running low on stock to replenish the shop floor as it’s all stashed two floors up without a lift.

They’re short of staff/their usual volunteers so a quick call to GoodGym and a community mission was launched. Alice even snuck out on her late shift's lunch break to help!

The stock room (one of three!) was chocker so we formed a socially distanced human chain to get bags of stock to the top of the steep stairs which were then cascaded down the stairs to a blue trolley a long, long way below. The boxes of books and crockery didn’t lend themselves to successful throwing so the team resorted to carrying down and up stairs whilst wearing masks and created their own GG HIIT workout. Nick decided he needs a bigger mask for these situations!

The cages in the shop floor stockroom were soon full to the brim, as were the trolleys, and we could run away after just 30 minutes having purchased a game of Dobble (GG Bristol favourite and mathematical wonder) to see us through Christmas Day. Russ got stuck in the arrows on the shop floor.

Once again the staff were amazed at our speed and prowess!

It was great to have lots of new faces join us for the final Tuesday Group Run of January: welcome to Richard, Harriet, Isabelle, Pawel, Sara Sona! And welcome to Frankie joining us from GoodGym Hackney for the next few weeks!

We tested everyone's brain power with a game of Shona Says (back by popular demand). Everyone's brains were ticking pretty nicely and there was only a few forfeit sprints. We split the group into three to complete our tasks for the evening:

1. Donation sorting at the British Heart Foundation
2. Tree pulling for Up Our Street
3. Painting at Redcliffe Nursery

Skirting the issue

Richard led a team of 10 to British Heart Foundation to help with donation sorting. Divided between sorting donations, tagging them and getting a new found love of steaming, the group got through loads of donations and found some hot new outfit items for their wardrobes (see photo evidence).

No beating about the bush

Meanwhile, Gary led a group to The Dings to help Up Our Street in their garden beds their. The team were surprised at the task of all of them removing a bush in the middle of the bed. Surely it wouldn't take them all to do that? But half an hour of them rotating and shovelling later and the group got the satisfaction of getting the whole thing out - well done gardening team!

Painting the town Redcliffe

The rest of us headed to Redcliffe Nursery with Mel leading a walking group there. Once we had all convened (with some detours), we got inside and split between painting the corridors and offices, moving all of the pebbles back into the pebble pit, sweeping and litter-picking the garden and doing the Squat & Lunge 200 Challenge. After half an hour of rotating around the different jobs, the nursery had a new feature wall in their office, a tidy playground and a coat of paint on the entrance to their hall and we had sore thighs and bums and surprisingly un-paint covered clothes. We will be back again soon to continue the job!

Once we were all back from our different corners of Bristol, we were able to celebrate the wonderful Alex hitting 200 (and 14) Good Deeds - she hit the big 2-0-0 a couple of weeks ago but this was her first Tuesday run to be presented with her t-shirt. In the meantime, she has managed to rack up 7% more deeds than what was being celebrated, wow.

Good-deeded and celebrated, that was it for another night of GoodGym Bristol and the last of the January challenge Group Runs!

Pun credit to Gazza

Another week of lunchtime donation sorting and it was great to have Lara join us for the first time! We got to work hanging and sorting summer stock (with the odd suspiciously wintery looking item hidden in there). With 6 of us on the job we got through 4 bags in this lunch break session, and I got to try on the superwoman sparkly hotpants to boot, winner!