Tonight was our yearly Halloween run.

Michael had promised that if others came in some kind of costume, he would wear the inflatable dinosaur costume.

We met at our usual start location in the City Centre, after a quick chat we welcomed our newest person Deborah, who had joined us at a goodgym run at Love Trails.

CROESO

After a brief moment inflating, and some strange looks from the pub behind us, it was time to set off on our run.

We had cheers of dinosaur, t-rex, there were beeping cars and lots of waves. Maybe we should have a T-Rex more often.

The task tonight was helping at Cwtch Together, a charity run disability play project, which promotes inclusive play and socialisation for disabled children and their families.

They are holding 2 Halloween parties, Friday and Saturday, and our fun task was to help set up the spooktacular event.

Everyone got into the spirit as we dressed tables, got pumpkins ready, built a play house, decorated the hall and carried in sand pits and black boards.

As we ended our evening with the usual group photo, the t-rex returned for the jog back.

Join us next week as we begin our Xmas tasks for 3 weeks.

Disclaimer - if you have never heard the Jessie J song 'Price Tag', please go and listen to it first if you want this report to make sense!

8 Goodgym folks ran, walked and cycled through the pouring rain to help out at the Samye Foundation.

Lorraine at Samye was pleased to see Michael, Adam, Emma, Aimee, Darren, Rosie, Dylan and Jonny arrive; she had pinned a task list to the door for us to crack on with!

Jonny and Aimee got on with pricing up items for the upcoming plant and book sale.....they under took the....

Price Task

Seems like everybody’s rushin’

Runnin’ through the rain, no hushin’

Volunteers with soggy shoes

Still smiling, got things to do

Why is everyone so serious?

Why am I leaf-clearing in shorts?

Can we slow down and just breathe?

Or at least get a towel, please?

It’s not about the price task, task, task

It’s all about the give back, back, back

We wanna make the world run

Forget about the rain splash, splash, splash

Just focus on the impact, impact

GG just wanna make it count

Even if we’re soaked and worn out

A little kindness, a little sweat

Volunteering with no regret

I ain't writing a song for every task.... :o)

There was plenty of vacuuming to be done so Adam and Emma (and Henry!) cracked on with that. Adam also washed the walls down in the hall to de-scuff them.

Some nominative determinism was in play as Rosie cut back the roses at the front of the foundation!...ably assisted by Dylan. Michael floated around (quite literally with the rain!) helping everyone, taking pics in the process.

The group were re-leaved to leaf Darren alone to sweep and clear up the.....you guessed it - leaves.

A little sodden we all really appreciated the piping hot Carrot and Coriander soup Lorraine had made to say thank you.

We all had a chat.........mainly about the old test card (click here if you are too young for this reference!) and dried off a little.

You may have noticed a non red runner amongst the pack, Jonny was being a good sport by wearing a Norwich City jersey as he lost a friendly wager with Darren and had to spend the evening in his rivals jersey! As you can tell from the pictures he was delighted! ;o)

The rain had got a lot harder but we ventured out running, walking and cycling back home or to the pub.

What a night of celebration we have tonight as 15 goodgymers, old and new, join to take on the task at the community orchard.

Firstly we welcome our 2 new runners, welcome to the Cardiff crew Evie and Simon.

CROESO

Then we had our pre-celebration for a very special birthday for Llion, followed by a night of fun celebrations at the flyte club.

Penblwydd hapus

After initial greetings and chats, we set off the walkers first on a slightly shorter and quicker route, before Lucy led the runners off through the park on a different route. We had the return of our water rolling barrel baddies, the bowsers, which allowed us to transport 80 litres of water in total at a time. Michael ran with them initially, until we hit the park and then the running challenges could begin. Each runner took a turn of running with a single bowser, and this certainly engaged the concentration as those contraptions had a mind of their own at times.

Our first stop along the way was at the cricket changing rooms, where the outside tap was situated. we picked four people to stay back and fill up the bowsers, whilst the rest ran over to the orchard to meet up with the walkers. Michael gave a quick briefing on the tasks, and a quick overview of the orchard project - which was really looking well settled on just its second year.

We had a couple of tasks tonight, so we split the group up to tackle them,

• running the bowsers back and forth to get filled
• watering the orchard
• collecting seeds from a couple of plants

Michael handed out brown envelopes for the seed collecting, and showed everyone which plants we were collecting from and how to get the most seeds. Our plants of choice were foxgloves and honesty.

Did you know?

The Welsh for foxgloves is "Ffion", remember that next time you meet someone with that name. Other translations are "bysedd y cŵn" and "Maneg Ellyllyn".

After a good half an hour of running back and forth, collecting seeds and Michael eating blackberries from the bushes like a feral animal, it was time to collect everything together, including ourselves, take a group photo and head back. Michael had to leave us at this point to drop off the bowsers at another location so that he could then join everyone for the birthday celebrations and darts.

Thanks to everyone for coming, expect some foxglove planting sessions in the orchard next year thanks to all of the seeds collected.