Another huge group of runners gathered for our Tuesday night run tonight. Welcome to Sophie, Eleanor and Lisa who joined us for the first time tonight - we hope to see you again soon!

After a game of warm-up Statues (which the group are much better at than Simon Says...), we split into two groups and headed into two teams towards our task for the night: the Malcolm X Centre in St Paul's. This local community centre runs a whole host of classes, socialising and support groups for local people across their two buildings. Jagn met us and explained the tasks for the night.

Firstly, one group was set to moving a pile of rubble and brick from one side of the centre grounds to another. The group set to it enthusiastically and got the task done in no time! A host of GoodGymers went about litter-picking around the centre grounds and local area in pairs, filling several bags of litter in just 20 minutes. The indoor groups split into cleaning teams and moving teams. The cleaning team set to work on the windows, doors and floors of the centre, giving it a good scrub down and clean up with all hands on deck. One part of the moving team moved the office from one room (downstairs) to another room (upstairs). With surprisingly minimal 'to-me, to-youing' , the group did the job quickly, despite the turn in the stairs. Meanwhile, the other part of the moving group had to move a fridge! They did this hefty task so quickly that the fridge movers then got the special treat of a short but hard fitness session to get their heart-rates pumping.

Before long, the group had completed all of the tasks (much to the amazement of Jagn and his team at our 'army'), and we headed back to base. Before people set off home for the night there was one final task: a Leap Frog Relay. It was closely contended, with a wide variation of leap frog techniques, but Darren's team took the glory at the end of it - bet that was a skill you didn't know you had.

Until next time!

Can you do the can-can?

Tonight we headed back to practice our can-sorting, weighing and lifting skills while helping East Bristol Food Bank to sort their 200 crates of supermarket donations ahead of the Christmas period. This is always a busy time, both for the donations coming in and the amount of food being processed through the food bank, so it was all hands on deck to get as much sorted as possible.

While Matt conquered his Winter Wonderland walking badge with the accompaniment of Debbie, the rest of split into two groups. Sally led a steadier group while the rest of us went on ahead. When we arrived at East Bristol Food Bank's new premises, Andy explained the sorting process to us and set the first group to work.

We can

Between the group, they manned the scales and weighed each crate to calculate how much had been donated, then split them into grouped items to make them easy to distribute.

Meanwhile, Sally's group arrived and they got the short straw of having to go straight into their fitness session from their run. On the tiny platform of dry ground outside the food bank, the group squeezed together to create a human-Tetris of plank holds, press ups, chair sits and more. After 10 minutes of work, hopefully their thighs, core and arms had enough burn to make them feel virtuous as they switched places with the other group in a food-sorting-and-fitness relay.

(but it would be better with some tin-sel...)

In no time, the group had sorted a large amount of the crates ready for distribution and had exercised GoodGym restraint not cracking into any of the biscuits. We waved Andy goodbye and set off home in the short dry-spell we had. On return, we got treated by Zdeni, who has flown through her good deeds and hit her 50th Good Deed at the weekend. She made the most amazing pernik which I promptly ate most of. Thanks Zdeni!

Welcome to Amanda, Kevin and Jessica who joined us for their first GoodGym Bristol run tonight - it was great to have you! And thanks to Alice for this week's pun!