Massive kudos to the 16 people who showed up on a very cold night for this, our sixth instalment of HelpfulPeeps leafleting. Over the last year we've worked our way through Kingsdown/St Pauls, Victoria Park, Southville, Stapleton Road and Bedminster spreading the word about this Pay it Forward initiative where requests forof help are answered for free by a growing online community of HelpfulPeeps.

Tonight we were off to hit St Marks Road in Easton which meant a nice long 3k each way (plus an extra 1 or 2k for running between letterboxes :) ). This kept us pretty warm considering the sub-zero temperatures around us and we managed to cover a lot of ground by splitting into pairs and covering a street at a time.

But this wasn't all ...

We had received our own request for help from a valued member of our GG Bristol project community and being HelpfulPeeps ourselves, we quickly put together a team of 4 led by run leader Jack (thanks Jack!) so that we could send some assistance. Ann-Marie at Full Circle needed a sofa moving and a number of items packed away into a skip and in no time at all, the items were all taken care of.

On our return we made sure to congratulate Caroline and Kait for reaching 50 good deeds and qualifying for their highly prized black T shirts. Kait and Caroline have contributed massively to GG Bristol, both are very popular regulars on our Group Runs and Missions, and Kait has been running to her coach for some time now too so its really nice to be able to recognise allthis tonight. Sadly its Caroline's last week in Bristol before she heads off to Sheffield (and GG Sheffield!) but she's promised to come back and visit soon!

Thanks to Caroline for the pink wafers and party food at the bar tonight and to Daniel who kindly baked some delicious chocolate brownies for us all!

Thanks to Alice for the pun!

Tonight we were on a mission to spread the word about missions as most of us headed off to Victoria park to deliver GG mission leaflets to the surrounding houses. Hopefully this will mean more elderly people will learn about all the fabulous DBS-checked Goodgym volunteers ready and waiting to come and sort out their gardens or help with other manual tasks around the house.

Since we also still had a few leaflets left from promoting the Emmaus warehouse sale last week, we took the opportunity to drop the rest of those off as well so a double dose of good delivered already.

But we didn't stop there. A small team were also dispatched to Kuumba community centre to help out with some sanding. The Kuumba community centre in St Pauls runs a wide range of activities and events including live events and workshops where you can learn about African dance, music, drama and literature. The term 'Kuumba' is Swahili suggesting Creativity.

I was expecting our task to be a few upstairs doors, but it turned out to be the main stage. This is good news as Nwanyi had explained to me that the edges of the stage had become a little splintered and risked hurting the feet of some of the dancers who perform there.

Finally we all returned to Queen Square for some shuttle relay races, and a series of one-minute conditioning exercises led by Matt.

I'll be standing down as GG Bristol trainer in the next few weeks so have a think about whether you would like to take on the role. An email should be going out in the next few days explaining how you can go about applying - feel free to ask me if you have any questions about what's involved

Tonight's objective was to deliver leaflets for Helpful Peeps and in doing so to break the previous documented GG Bristol record of 1000 leaflets set in 10 minutes flat for the same organisation a couple of months ago.

Helpful Peeps is a local startup that aims to create an online community where the members 'pay it forward'; offering their skills and knowledge for free to help others. They're good friends of GG Bristol having given us a couple of mission leads in the past. They were even featured on the local news this week.

GG Bristol you are the best!

With a record up for grabs it was encouraging to see 15+ sign-ups by lunch time. When the drizzle started at 1pm it was nice to see that grow to almost 20. But as the heavens opened and the rain properly set in just an hour or two before the run it was just incredible to see the number GROW once again to reach 22.

The conditions tonight were quite frankly awful and the fact that everyone rocked up and got stuck in, smiling and joking as they did so is why GG Bristol is such a special place to be.

Welcome!

We even had new Bristol members. Tilly, Nina and Maria take a well deserved bow (and give them a cheer!). I promise that (apart from tonight) it never ever rains at Goodgym and it will be great to see all you again in sunnier conditions soon.

Also kudos to Kait, coming along on her second run just days after her first outing on Saturday. So great to see all you new people - I hope you'll enjoy being part of our Bristol family for many deeds to come.

Team Efforts

As to the task, well each person was give a plastic wallet containg 200 leaflets and asked to team up with 3 or 4 others to distribute these leaflets in accordance with the team map. The idea was that in addition to the record attempt we would have a team competition where we would count up the remaining leaflets and find the team who delivered the most leaflets per person per minute. In the end it turned out to be a challenge just to keep the leaflet dry long enough to make it from the wallet into the letterbox and after a solid 40 minutes of working hard in our respective teams the remaining leaflets seemed to end up in one large pile so I think we will re-visit the team competition another day.

Massive respect to all the teams - you did Bristol proud today.

Kingsdown Massive - Tom, Dom, David, Cristian

Cotham Peaks - Matt, Ceri, Maria, Caroline

Crofters - Alice, Clo, Emma, Kait

St Pauls Pioneers - Gary, Nina, Charlie, Nik

Cotham Slopes - Mel, Darren, Richard, Tilli, Mair

Record Breaker?

And the record? Well, the final count is yet to be completed - I will update the report (and twitter) when I have the number!

Finally, credit to Richard for the pun (sorry I don't know my Adele!) and to Cristian for some of the photos. Thanks chaps!