Do you like the 5 times table? Well, here is a run report for you...

Lex give it up for 50!

50 runners came out tonight - one to celebrate each of Lexi's Good Deeds. Massive congratulations on hitting 50, Lexi! This included 5 new runners joining our crazy crew. Welcome to Francesca, Anna, Lauren, Cerys and Johan - it was great to have you.

For our celebration, the group split into three tasks.

Most of us started off by heading towards Emmaus, stopping for a quick game of Chicken Otter Badger led by Gary and leaving the group looking knackered before we were halfway to the task. Nevertheless, they powered through.

Those who thought they could face more Grit from Gary, went to do hill-running and leafleting for Penny Brohn's upcoming Stomp Sponsored Walk. Under Gary's watchful eye, they zoomed up the hills, around the houses and were back at base in no time. Impressive!

Meanwhile, the second group arrived at Emmaus, where Xanne talked to us about the brilliant work they do then set us to work sorting out the clothes stockroom and the bric-a-brac. The team meticulously sorted the items into piles to sell in store, online and recycle. Darren and Matt got very into pricing silverware, so now we all know where to go if we need some Bargain Hunt advice. Many crazy hats and lampshades later, we had sorted many rails, filled many bags and cleaned up a bunch of bric-a-brac ready to sell. The silverware remains to be confirmed whether it was valuable or not...

Dave led the third group to Bedminster, to plant some lavender bulbs with Urban Buzz. It is the perfect time for planting these, and it will really brighten up the area where we were planting in a few months' time. While Dave, being the good Run Leader he is, was keeping to time and getting the group to finish up ready for a leisurely, direct jog back, the group had other ideas. With Dave having reached his 500th Good Deed at the weekend, Operation Distract Dave was fully underway. Dave was thrown off being a Run Leader, and the group were soon directed on an extensive diversion scattered with as many squats, lunges and tricep dips as required to get 50 runners in the same place and ready for the ceremony of dreams.

King Dave of 500, Prince of Puns and Godfather of Good Deeds

With everything in place (almost), Dave and his group returned to a red carpet of GoodGym tshirts, arched by the friendly Bristol GG faces, leading to a red throne. To the crowds cheering, Dave was donned with a red cloak. Paul stepped to the helm and did a skillful job of anointing Dave as the official King Dave of 500, Prince of Puns and Godfather of Good Deeds (King of GoodGym for short).

Dave made a beautiful speech, but the ceremony was not over yet. Alex and Clo produced the most wonderful Ukulele Duet I have ever seen, to Dave-specials of '500 Good Deeds' (to the tune of 500 Miles) and 'I Want to Be Like Dave' (to the tune of the Jungle Book). Musical and lyrical genius, accompanied by the less musically-talented but incredibly enthusiastic rousing voices of GoodGym Bristol. All of this was followed by Claire's spectacular 500 cake and lots of pints. Well done again Dave and thanks for everything.

And with that, we will give one more Mexican Dave and say thank you very much for a lovely game of fives.

Thirty lovely GG Bristolians assembled at Vivo for what is now our 4th card bed workshop - run as ever by our good friend, Elliot Lord. It seems like only yesterday that we did our first in that rather cosy workshop at the Island.

Clo got the warm up off to a great start, initiating a beautifully executed semi-promenade into the centre and back again - undoubtedly a move we'll repeat in the future - before we progressed to a few high knees and a Mexican shooting star. We then split into two groups - the unloading-the-car pace group and the not-unloading-the-car pace group and set off pretty sharpish so we could get to our venue at the United Reformed Church as soon as possible.

Time was of the essence tonight; we needed to be out on the dot of 7:30 to make way for a meeting that had been scheduled. Consequently, as soon as Elliot had give us a quick introduction to the basic concepts we divided into six tables and got to work on copying the templates to make bed sections from the available bike box card.

As always it was an impressive sight to see so many people become productive within seconds of their arrival. And great to see everyone working so well together - our new members and more seasoned runners as one seamless whole.

Big shout out once again to my clean-up team who constantly ferried the offcuts back to the car so we could be sure of leaving on time. And amazingly, we were completely cleared up and ready to go with 5 minutes to spare - enough time for Elliot to demonstrate constructing a bed and for Vicki to perform the traditional trial.

But wait, there's more! While all this was going on, a tatical paint team managed to complete a coat of sky blue around the side of the raised stage - thus helping out our lovely hosts at the same time. Top work painters!

The other benefit of leaving so promptly was we got back to base in good time. And at the special request of Lexi, our new recruit from Cardiff, we got cracking on a bit of fitness with a couple of stride sets along Queen Square - being sure to focus on good running form!

There wasn't time to pack up the completed card for distribution so I'm not sure how many beds we made tonight but I'll be sure to update the report once I've unloaded the car!

Thank you to Jack for leading the second group tonight - and to Alice and Charlie for backmarking!

Thanks also to Alice for the pun - two out of the last three, Alice!

Another fantastic turn out tonight as 30 of us set out on a fairly short run over to Dame Emily Park in Bedminster.

The park is cared for by the Dame Emily Park Project (DEPP), a small group of volunteers who work hard to keep the space tidy and the equipment maintained as well as hosting events for the local community.

On arrival at the park we were met by Ursula and Sarah who split us into groups and set about equipping us all with litter pickers and rubbish bags. We were then all assigned different zones of the park and tasked with clearing away all the litter we could find.

With October fast approaching the early evening light is starting to fade fairly quickly and the simple task of navigating around the park was made somewhat more challenging as a result. It was nice to see a few head torches appear and with a couple of our new lights in play we managed to carry on a little longer and finish our task.

Apparently the park had had unexpectedly been cleared early that morning so we were expecting that maybe there wouldn't be too much to do, but Goodgym runners have a real knack for finding litter so it was no surprise to finish up with over 10 full bags of rubbish by the end of our session. Amazing work everyone - DEPP really appreciated all our efforts. It was nice to have some of the skaters in the park helping out too.

Another short run and we found ourselves back at Queen Square with a lttle time to spare so we finished off with a trio of running trains heading around the perimeter. The bursts of speed required to move to the front are a good form of interval train-ing (get it?).

Finally we presented a set of red shoelaces to Kerry for brining along here sister Megan on Saturday and we promised a similar award to Abigail next time for bringing along Sophie tonight.

A very warm welcome to our new runners, Kate and Hollie. Hope you had fun!

A lovely warm and sunny morning greeted us as we convened at Roll For The Soul for a longer run for today's task.

It was great that we were joined by two belles from Bath, Steph and Mary, fabulous to have you both along! Wanting to get involved we also had Alice, Caroline and Lydia joining us on their bikes to boost our numbers.

With a longer run and plenty to do on the task, we were off at 11 am sharp after the briefest of warm ups, opting instead for a gentle run out of Bristol to Brislington for a brand new task today.

We had been asked by the Project Rainbow to help clear a garden for a group of young people with special needs who are moving in very soon. Five disabled students are moving into a house owned by Bristol city council, as part of a new scheme called Project Rainbow and while the house is pretty much done finished and ready, the grounds need quite a lot of work and the council are quoting a huge amount of money to clear it, which is beyond the project’s budget.

After a 3 mile run, with a hilly twist in the tail, out to the site we armed ourselves with forks, spades, hoes, rakes and a wheelbarrow and got stuck straight into the task.

The grass had recently been cut and so Harriet and Chloe made a fantastic job of raking up the cuttings.

Steph, Mary, Richard, David, Declan, Alice and Lydia headed to one side of the garden and demolished a patch of stinging nettles and weeds, while Neil, Liam and Paul headed to the other side of the garden to tackle more weeds and liberate some lovely sunflowers in the process.

In the meantime, Caroline and myself manned the wheelbarrow and ferried the huge amounts of green waste being uprooted by our fearless gang over to the green waste bin which we managed to completely fill in the 50 minutes or so that we were on site!

Caroline was also doing a wonderful job of liberating several caterpillars and spiders from the waste so that they could be allowed to roam free in the green space around them - bless!

Whilst trying to round up the group, it was no surprise to see Paul shnuck into wheelbarrow duties towards the end (can't believe he allowed us to use it in the first place but he seemed distracted by the sunflowers!), and we eventually persuaded Declan to stop digging and headed back for base.

This was a more challenging run today, particularly given the very warm conditions but everyone did brilliantly both on the run and the task.

Big thanks to you all for coming along to this, to Paul for backmarking, to Steph for leading the stretches whilst I headed inside to do a document check, and bearing with me in my more stressful moments! A nice new task and a job well done!

Cheers all!