With Ciara and Dennis mainly deciding to stay home tonight, it gave the hardcore GoodGymers a chance to get out for Tuesday Group Run with only some gusts and a bit of hail to contend with. It was great to have Ellie, Darius and Julia join us for the first time - welcome! It was an extra special day for GoodGym as it was UK Pun Day - surely this is the equivalent of an important national holiday for GoodGym?

Turning the tables

Liam was leading the Warehouse Shifters to Emmaus, where they were helping Xanne on our regular slot in their big donations warehouse. As we had been told that they were going to be leafleting for the night, it was a lucky escape into the warmth and dryness of the indoors! The team were tasked with a massive game of Furniture Tetris (or clearing all of furniture donations into ordered areas with enough aisles and room for movement around them). A lot of shifting, lifting and 'To me, to you'-ing later and the warehouse was in a much better order than before.

Up above the streets of Bristol, leafleting in the night, GoodGym fills your letterboxes, with stuff you'll like - come and run the Children's Hospice Rainbow (Run)

The rest of us headed to Clifton to continue leafleting for The Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Luckily the hills were not to punful, and soon we were up and punning and ready to go. We split into four teams to cover the area. Between them, they distributed 500 leaflets in less than 25 minutes. Paul B was there so I think he was sharing his secret leafleting skills with the group. The first group back celebrated with the underrated biscuit classic which is The Party Ring. We headed back to centre with the added entertainment of watching trailer-gait and Darren entertained/confused most of us who were vaguely young with a rendition of the Rainbow theme tune with the impressive GoodGym-based lyrics. Luckily the power of Google has refreshed our memories and we kind of know what he was going on about.

Finally, our bunch of pundits got inside and paired up with their well-earned GoodGym pint/beverage/hot shower/dry clothes. Happy Pun Day one and all!

WOOHOO GoodGym Bristol Tuesday night Group Runs are back with a bang for 2020!! We don't do things in halves here at Bristol so we brought in the New Year in style with our new record of 70 runners on a single Group Run! This included 14 lovely first timers - welcome to the gang everyone!

To put all these hands to good use we split into three different tasks...

Sofa Away

Group 1: Emmaus

Richard led a running group and Melanie led a walking group to Emmaus to give our monthly helping hands with sorting their donations in their huge warehouse. On this occasion, it included the newly-founded sport of Sofa Smashing - who knew?

Group 2: The Litter-Pickers

Maria and Alice led the chatty groups and I led the returning (still casual) Greyhounds on our 6km run to and from Lawrence Hill. Alice then did a stellar job of co-ordinating a team of litter-pickers to pick up 5 bags of litter in just 25 minutes from the local area. Definitely a task which needed doing, so thank you Alice and litter-picking dream team!

Group 3: The Matthew Tree Project

Meanwhile, the rest of the group split into A and B to do a 50:50 session helping The Matthew Tree Project with sorting their massive load of donations which they had gathered in the run up to Christmas. As the warehouse was packed, the rest of the group were outside doing The Uptown Funk Dance* and sprint relays.

*may not look good on the dancefloor.

The Fresh Face of Bristol

After sorting a mass of Amy from TMTP's donations and puffing a bit more than previously due to our dancing, we headed back to Queen Square and reunited the groups to play a game of When was Keep On Movin' by Five released. It was a nail-biting one, but Tim eventually stole the prize of the correct answer (1999, in case you were wondering).

We then had the chance to celebrate the wonderful Sarah hitting her 50th Good Deed tonight. Well done Sarah!! We look forward to seeing you sporting your black tee soon!

And that was a wrap! (Well, after we found Alex was looking as fresh-faced as a 17-year-old on tonight's run anyway). We will see you all very soon for more January Challenge Madness!

Pun credit to Gary

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Everywhere you go That's where GoodGym comes in of course, with Bristol numbers in force Sorting donations and cleaning crates as they go

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Food surplus in the warehouse store But the prettiest sight to see, is at the Matthew Tree Where GoodGym helps food parcels go out the door

50 runners in red, to knock the jobs on the head Around the streets of Bristol Lining up tins and weighing all things Filling up a sandpit so the kids can dip their toes And Shona's got them doing lots of burpees outside again

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Everywhere you go We ran back along the cycle path, with another good deed in the bag Lighting up the pavement with our headtorches-a-glow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas We'll see Matthew Tree in the new year And the thing that will make 'em ring is the extra GoodGymers we'll bring With a January challenge to turn our good up a gear

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas This year's group runs are no more But the prettiest sight to see is the Pieminster meal for fourty, Which Alice organised so we could all have mash-galore. Sure it's Christmas, once more

We avoided today's windy weather and dark clouds and gathered for a Double Leaf Whammy, running to help Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group clearing leaves at Holy Trinity Church and Penny Brohn with leafleting for their Christmas Concert on 6th December.

Penny for your thoughts

Alice D headed off with a group of 9 hardy runners to battle the hills of Clifton to distribute 1 million (or probably 500) leaflets in just 45 minutes around the area. Penny Brohn will be so pleased with this increased advertising. I will give them a head's up about booking out the stadium...

Unbeleafable

Meanwhile, the rest of the group headed to Holy Trinity Church and were split into groups for various jobs. The Leaf Team were armed with brushes, rakes and recycling bags to tackle the mounds of leaves on the pathways and grass. Of course this couldn't be done without throwing and kicking a good load around before getting down to business.

The Loppers got to work clipping back bushes to clear an entrance to.... a telephone box. We marvelled at the idea that people were still using the telephone box, and marvelled further when we realised that we were in fact clearing the window to the box rather than the entrance. Meanwhile, Liam and Dhanesh casually sawed down a tree in approximately 8 minutes, showing their future careers as tree surgeons.

Finally, The Leafleters were kitted out with their maps and their target destinations and split into three teams to distribute as many hundreds of leaflets for Christmas events as they could.

Not mulch left

By 7.30, nothing was leaf-left, including the digestive biscuits. We regrouped and ran back to the Queen Square, stopping for some cheeky sprints and squat jumps along the way.

Thanks to Lexi, Richard, Gary and Jack for tonight's puns

It was great to have Hannah, Katie, BiBi and Jim join us for their first GoodGym run tonight - we hope to see you again soon! We were also delighted to celebrate Phill's 50th Good Deed, which he did in true Phill-style by getting completely stuck in with the task and covered in paint. Congratulations Phill!

After running circles around the warm-up, we split into two groups to conquer as much good as we could tonight.

Alice D led a group of 17 over to Felix Road Adventure Playground where they battled through the crowds to get into the playground and met Zoe. She set the group to work on a mass weed clearance of the playground. With all-hands-on-deck, the group made a massive dent in the huge area, and got rid of several wheelbarrows of weeds in the process. Chris even had a chance to show everyone his wheelbarrow racing skills - check them out here.

Going South

The rest of the group headed to the Southville Centre where we met Hugh. This local community centre is extremely busy with lots of groups and activities using it during the week, so they were keen to put some extra hands to good use on a quieter evening. They had a whole load of painting to do, so we split as many of the paintbrushes as were available between the group, assigned a tall person per section and four teams set to work painting both of the toilets, the bin shed and protecting the outdoor wood.

The lucky remaining people were tasked with a circuit in the outdoor area, cheered on by the outdoor painters. After three teams had rotated through the circuit, this week's painting was almost complete. We feasted on celebratory chocolate (Hugh knows how to treat us) and headed back to town, but not without stopping to complete this week's Burpee Challenge on the way. More than 600 burpees between the group later, Will, Richard and Daniel were crowned Burpee Champions.

We dragged our slightly-more-tired-now legs back to Queen Square and feasted on Phill's incredible vegan brownies (which you can make again ANYTIME), and then headed for this month's GoodGym Eats at Franco Manca, deeeed-licious.