pun credit goes to Darren Watkins

When we start hitting the winter months, GoodGym becomes more challenging - it's dark, cold, tasks are more difficult to come by, people are less motivated in the normal world... but NOT in the GoodGym Norwich world. We had another incredible 33 runners this evening, which still amazes me the dedication everyone puts in.

It was our 75th Group Run tonight and we're going as strong as ever.

Leanne and Raven were doing their 1st good deeds and Neil his 1st in Norwich after moving up from Bristol where he'd previously been to GoodGym.

Cheska was completing her 10th good deed and Calum his 50th good deed, which also fell on his 27th birthday.

Katy collected in the remaining donations for the Norwich Foodbank, which she is kindly taking in tomorrow.

We visited the Oxfam shop on Magdalen Street again as they needed our help as it's a busy time of year for donations and they rely on volunteers like us.

The main task was to sort through all the Men's clothes donations which required: bags of clothes to be brought through to the shop floor, sorting them into item type, sorting them into size order, the hangers to have the correct size tag added, the clothes labelled up with price and size, clothes over a certain price to be security tagged and then all items to be placed on the shop floor displays. Basically there was a lot to do!

Before a blink of an eye we had a production line going on and everyone was getting stuck in.

5-6 GoodGymers were also cleaning the shop floor, being a hard surface and wet time if year, the floors get dirty very easily.

We managed 50 minutes at the task, which equates to about 27 hours of volunteering time! As we got to the end of the time, the task owner asked us not to bring any more bags of clothes out... the shock on his face when we said we'd got through them all! We don't waste any time for sure.

After the very satisfying task, we headed back to base via a run up Grapes Hill, which everyone got up very quickly this week!

Then it was time for the pub afterwards for a well deserved social.

Next week we're visiting the Norwich Foodbank, there may be 2 tasks next week so what this space.

Credit for this week's pun goes to Mr Darren Watkins.

For the 2nd week in a row we topped 30 runners :-)

The word of GoodGym Norwich is certainly getting around as we had another 6 new runners this week. Welcome to the family Sam, Sarah, Rosie, Sabrina, Isabelle & Verena.

Thank you Catherine for being back runner this week.

Some milestones this week as Hayley has now done 10 good deeds and Beks and Calum have now done 25 good deeds each! Amazing achievements.

Due to some last minute problems out of my control we had to change the task and instead we were visiting Oxfam to sort through some more donation books.

We had a short 1.5km jog there and was greeted by Emma who went through what books we could and couldn't keep. The good ones get put in boxes ready to be priced (Calum had already priced up Oliver's t-shirt and my forehead) and shelved and the bad ones get sacked up and put down the conveyor belt ready to be recycled.

Someone came across 3 nude body art books, I checked whether they could be kept and apparently they sell for a lot of money... enough said!

The team got through the rest of the book donations, which is a massive help to the charity and not bad when you consider over 16 hours of volunteering time went into this evening.

After we emptied our sacks on the conveyor belt to Sarah and Tom, we headed back downstairs for a quick group photo and then off for the fitness session we went ;-)

We had a stroll up Grapes Hill before hitting Chapelfield Gardens for a 10-minute FUN fitness session... well I think it was fun mwahaha.

We stretched off back at The Forum and then sang Happy Birthday to Bill who is turning 69 tomorrow! I'll be happy if I'm Bill's condition when I reach his age.

Next week we're visiting Catton Grove Community Centre to remove a large bush.

After a long winter we finally had daylight at the start of our run... roll on summer!

It was great to welcome Neil on his 1st GoodGym experience.

Well done to Hayley on doing the Wymondham 20-miler on Sunday.

Although she wasn't there tonight, a massive well done to Bek for doing her 1st ever Half Marathon yesterday... not bad considering she only started running about 6 months ago!

Also, some land marks tonight as Tom, Chloe, Sarah & Darren have now each done 10 GoodGym deeds!!!

A thank you to Elizabeth for being back runner tonight.

We had a rare indoor task tonight as we visited the Oxfam charity shop to sort through their book donations. There was a criteria sheet for which books can be kept and which ones had to be recycled... we were interested to hear what the definition of a 'dirty' book is.

Tom and Sarah took charge of the conveyor belt to take the recyclable books downstairs. However much they were tempted, they did refrain from taking a ride down it!

Alex was a little concerned he wasn't allowed in as there was a sign on the door saying 'No Studs Allowed' ... but then his head go bigger so he probably couldn't fit in anyway ;-)

The GoodGym-ers got so much done in 45 minutes (which equates to about 18 hours of volunteering time) and this makes a huge difference to charities like Oxfam who purely rely on volunteers.

On the way back we stopped to have a photo taken in front of a newly erected show piece outside the NUA.

Next week we are having an Easter Monday run to Grapes Hill Community Garden. This is the location of our very 1st Group Run in Norwich.