Q: Why couldn’t the runner get away from the zombie? A: He hit the wall

But there was no wall-hitting tonight, only a bunch of brave GoodGymers, risking missing the Bake Off Final merely by attending and risking losing all feeling in their fingers and toes by weeding on such a cold night, and a bunch of weeds and litter, soon to be no more.

Ghosts v Ghouls

While the Walking Group made a headstart, the night started with an incredible show: as a merely Trainer in a world of other beings, I watched as the Ghosts and Ghouls battled it out in a running-drill-Scare Off. Luckily, it wasn't quite scary enough to scare off Rodwel on his first GoodGym experience - phew and welcome!

Exorcise

On our way to the task, this foolish ghoulishness was continued with zombie walking lunges (special shout out to Clo and Alex who did this with impressive enthusiasm and sound effects) and we soon made it to Newtown to meet Saliha from Up Our Street.

Fangtastic good deeding

The group split into litter-pickers and weeders. With this divide and conquer tactic, we had soon got rid of a whole section of weeds from 30 metres of the roadside in question, while the litter pickers managed to fill several bags per pair with litter (with the top interesting finds going to Caroline and Richard's chair, Clo's glasses and Alex's car keys). Within 30 minutes, the group had created a pile of full bags of litter, garden waste and recycling to be collected by Bristol Waste tomorrow. During this time, Clo and Darren mastered the art of litter-picking swinging (see the photo for evidence) and other members of the group were spotted practicing their zombie moves for tomorrow... All in a hard night's work!

With the temperature dropping further, we started on a speedy keep-warm run home, stopping for a quick game of Halloween corners and covering Darren's favourite Wobbly Bridge Strava Segment along the way. Before long, we were back at base with another Good Deed under our belts and, although we tried, we had not managed to outrun the skele-pun.

You are all unboolievable, and I will leave you with a final, awful Halloween joke to send you on your scary ways...

What do you get when you drop a pumpkin? Squash.

A gorgeous sunny day saw six of us arrive at Feed Bristol for the monthly Sims Hill session ready to join Corra and the other volunteers out in the big field. Caroline in particular deserved extra kudos - managing to find her way to Stapleton in borrowed transport having had 7 hours of car gearbox woes on the way back from Sheffield this weekend. Good also to see Debbie making a return after her time away overseas.

As we waited for everyone to arrive, Gary impressed us all with his fresh mint and verbena tea ultimately even tempting Jack away from his preferred cup of Builder's! We then had to transport our gear and some new cabbage plants across to the field using a couple of wheelbarrows (which frankly already made the task a winner for me).

Our main task today was to clear the polytunnel of any remaining crop and the underlay (probably not the technical term) in order that it could be re-purposed for no-dig planting by laying down layers of municipal compost (the stuff from your brown bins!). This was accomplished fairly quickly but proved fairly warm in the sunny weather and resulted in a fair amount of dust, so it was nice then to go on and continue with some of the leek weeding we had been doing last time.

Our morning finished we wandered back, having helped ourselves to the odd stray aubergine, chilli or sprig of kale left over from our polytunnel clearance.

No rain tonight so certain people who asked which task was inside needn't have worried after all :)

We had two tasks, one to help out Baggator youth project paint their Pickle Factory and one to help out Full Circle, hosts of the Docklands Youth Project.

The Pickle Factory painters were led by Charlie and were charged firstly with checking on the origin of the name. In fact, in a bizarre and unexpected twist of fate it turns out that the Pickle Factory is so named because it used to be a Pickle Factory. Apparently it still smelled of pickles for some time after the factory closed. Thanks Charlie for confirming this.

The second objective was to get busy sanding and painting at this fantastic local project which offers the local youth all manner of activities ranging from bicycle maintenance through table tennis and even programming workshops run in their lovely theatre space. I'm pleased to report that great progress was made here too, though there is still a little left for a return visit in a couple of weeks time.

The Full Circle five plus four, so called to poorly mirror the alliteration on the previous task but actually inaccurate as the fabulous Emma joined us later, set off to clear their outside courtyard of leaves and brambles so the grass mat could be relaid. We were a little early so we squeezed in some step ups - where someone apparently fell over in an embarassing manner but I can't possibly reveal who - and an unnecessary second flight of steps.

Ann-Marie met us and we were soon at work raking brushing and bagging everything in our way until we had 6 or 7 full bags and a nice clear courtyard. Some of us will return to lay the gravel and mat next week, but Ann-Marie seemed really please with our progress so far!

After a varied pace lap of Queen Square we congratulated the runners at last weekends Kelston 10k and reminded everyone to check on their plans for Bucharest! Finally, a number of us went on to our monthly eats at Bella Vista, brilliantly organised by Clo and featuring a genuine Emma selfie at last.

And the run title? Well, Richard came up with the excellent It'll be all white on the night, but I'm pretty sure its been used. So I've gone with Caroline's lovely tongue twister instead - just because it made me smile.

The nights are starting to draw in but we still had 32 runners keen to help out a local food bank!

The run started as normal with a warm up and introductions outside of Vivo health club, and then we set off as massive wave of red interspersed with other colours to head to a big yellow storage box off a dual carridgeway in the industrial heartland of Bristol.

We met up with Andy, the co-ordinator of the Bristol Food Bank and our task was to label various cans, pots, tins, packets, and other containers with their expiry date - a task that would take Andy and one of his helpers several hours. The amazing power of Goodgym meant that we did this in 30 minutes! Go team!

Due to the shortage of Sharpies, we split the gang in to two - Chris led half the gang in a massive litter pick and the rest labelled and weighed cans. 15 minutes in, the teams swapped. I have to confess, seeing biscuits and bars of chocolate there made me very peckish. There was also a surprising amount of noodles!

After almost 40 minutes of hard work, we set off back towards the centre of town on the frantic hunt for bins - it seems that the St Philips Marsh area of Bristol is a bit short on them despite it being home to the city's recycling centre (and they would let us in to put our rubbish there! BOO!)

On the way back, a staggered traffic light crossing became the perfect opportunity for a spot of tricep dips, and we eventually got back to Vivo just past 8pm.

Top job any one!

31 wonderful runners met up at Vivo Sports Club for a lovely little run south of the river. I'd been a bit nervous about the turnout as earlier the alleged hottest day in September ever turned in to the wettest day, with a large thunderstorm doing it's best to put people off around lunchtime.

The thunder failed and it was an all out win for GoodGym! We set off slowly but once across the river picked up the pace and headed to a small plot of land in Bedminster that we'd been to several times; every time it gets a little better, so it's like it takes 1 step back, then we give it a push and it takes 2 forwards. And this time I managed to get a before and after photo (with Ben proudly wielding 2 trowels in the middle of the empty patch).

We split in to 2 groups - one headed to a site on South Street and the rest stayed put and got down and dirty with the weeds. We had Mel running with us tonight, she seemed to have more horticultural knowledge than the rest of us put together, so with her keeping an eye on proceedings, we set to pulling up what was not needed. One great find were some cosmia (apologies for the spelling) - a plant that grows from bulbs. It had done well over the summer and so could be split in to several different plants and replanted in new places.

After a good 30 minutes of intense weeding, the job was done, both groups er... regrouped, and we ran off in to the sunset (literally - it's getting darker in the evenings, we're going to start to have to bring head torches!). But the work was not finished...

Walking lunges, sideways squats and high kicks/foot taps were in order to get our muscles fired up a bit more with an aim to improve their strength and flexibility, and so make us better runners. It was oddly hypnotic to watch 30 runners lunge their way around Queen Square!

A good long stretch at the end of the run ensured that we'd be ready for more next week and we also sung happy birthday to Lisa as the darkness drew in.

Great running, weeding, lunging and squatting everyone, thanks for coming!