A perfect sunny day for a run along the river to St George today.

We were due to help Wellsping Healthy Living Centre with their allotment but since there was only really enough to keep 12 people occupied today and since we hate to waste a potential doing-good-opportunity we picked up a few litter pickers from Bristol Waste and put together a small task force to 'plog' around Netham park.

Strawberry Lane

The allotment at Strawberry Lane was particularly beautiful today - with the little pond looking very appealing in the sunshine. It was well worth the steep climb to get there from the river (or at least I though so). On arrival, Louise tasked our first group with moving a variety of pieces of timer and pallets from around the sheds into a pile at the other side so that they can all be burned to make more useful growing space. This involved a variety of techniques including the well-loved human chain, a few wheelbarrow loads and some pair work with the heavier sleepers.

A second group worked to move a pile of stones - some of which looked pretty heavy! The group got through this in no time and proceeded to help out with the timber and get cracking on a little digging.

In the 40 minutes we were on site the timber and stone was all moved and we look forward to returning to help fill the raised planters in a few weeks time!

Netham Park

It turned out that there wasn't actually all that much litter to be found around the park, but I'm pretty sure there was none to be found at all by the time Charlie and her team were finished. The team also found time to make friends with the group playing football there who I believe were involved in an outreach initiaitive to Ghana - even getting themselves invited to a BBQ! Thanks to all of you for agreeing to take on this less glamorous task - its always massively appreciated when everyone willingly distributes themselves where they are needed when we have multiple tasks like today, and its why I love this club so much.

Thanks to Charlie for leading the Netham group and to Jack both for back marking mine - and also for todays pun (swipe left if you like it).

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend everyone!

Immense! A new Saturday record of 40 Goodym'ers turned up for our bonus Christmas Eve Eve run today.

Extra special thanks to our Cardiff and Bath friends for coming all the way over to join us today - it was lovely to have so many members of our GG West family over for Christmas. We should definitely meet up more often next year!

The original plan was to help out at the Christmas shelter, but they had been so well served by volunteers during the week that they really only needed a handful of people today. So rather than put all those good deeds to waste we split into 6 groups and spread out around Bristol. (Some of the details and photos may be a little sketchy for now - the group leaders are welcome to add to their sections as they see fit!).

Time fliers pie as Charlie out reaches herself to all points central

Charlie led her group of runners around central Bristol, distributing fliers from the Christmas shelter to anyone sleeping rough on the streets. Each flier was accompanied with the offer of a mince pie, sadly without cream though.

Lisa and Graham pushing the envelope to reach All Hallows Church

Lisa and Graham kindly took on delivery of a bunch of shelter fliers to All Hallows Church in Lawrence Hill meaning that if you were to run the whole perimeter covered by our groups today you would have been taking on a 14 km run around Bristol (see photos)

Dave turns over a new leaflet at Southville

Dave's gang headed out to Southville to place GG mission leaflets at cafes and shops along North Street. The hope is that this will mean lots more elderly people will find out about Goodgym and we can brighten up their January and February by helping out with a bit gardening or simple jobs around the house.

On the way back they gave out a couple of fliers from the homeless shelter

Maria experiences St Peter's Hospice-tality as she helps out at the Broadmead branch

A last minute call to our friends at St Peters Hospice this week meant that we were able to set up yet another task for a group led  by MariatoMtoto help out at their Broadmead branch.

Matterhorn goes native-ity in epic 9K to St Albans church

Of course it had to be our very own ultra-running Matt (check out his new badge) leading the longest run today out to St Albans church in Westbury. This task to set up the Church for Christmas (including a nativity scene) proved very popular, especially when the possibility of some mulled wine was discussed.

Saving Private Room Paul to take a group to the shelter

And finally yours truly took a group out to the shelter itself where a couple of us helped out around the kitchen while the rest of us attempted to re-organise the dormitory and pass a very important message about a potential flood back from the Quakers meeting hall. Thanks to Alex once again for helping out during my more scatterbrain moments.

200 Good Deeds!

Thanks to all my group leaders and photographers. And last but not least, huge congratulations to Richard for hitting 200 good deeds today. He's too modest to make a big thing out of this, but I think everyone at GG Bristol values his kindness and loyalty - and of course enjoyed his fabulous Canal Run earlier this month!

Happy Christmas everyone - this is now genuinely the very last group run before Christmas, see you in the New Year!

A very mild evening saw another great turnout for our two tasks tonight. After a brisk warm-up and some newt herding, we parted company and while one group set off for the Emmaus warehouse, the remainder were escorted off to St Pauls Adventure Playground by our brand new run leader, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie!

Emmaus Warehouse

Emmaus helps previously homeless people get back into work by giving them longer term place to live and helping them develop new skills, including PAT testing for companies, performing house clearances and moving large items for elderly or vulnerable people. A couple of the companions also help to organize the warehouse that stores the goods for the Emmaus shops - including one located on the same site.

Now a large part of the current shop stock is womens clothing and the two male warehouse staff could use some assistance in sorting this stock into the correct sizes (some of it is unlabeled). So, it was quite handy that our Emmaus group was almost entirely made up of runners who could do just that. In just 30 minutes the two teams of 8 moved a large quantity of the clothing onto rails with consistent hangers and lovely clear sizing cubes - a task that would have taken much longer otherwise.

Meanwhile, another small group worked through the donated books to sort fiction from non-fiction. The usual debates over categorisation ensued. Is "Pooh's Workout Book" - fiction or non-fiction? And of course, trampoline engineer Kerry made a beeline for the clothes rail construction task, ably assisted by one of our new runners Tim - who also came up with tonights pun - please do come again, Tim :)

And to top it all, Abigail finally got her red laces.

Thanks for back marking, Kerry!

St Pauls Adventure Playground

A group of 10 runners merrily trotted over to St Paul's Adventure Playground. An amazing local play area that is being spruced up and ran by a group of volunteers.

On arrival we were met by Dug who had a long list of jobs for us to be getting on with. We quickly got to work forming a good old good gym chain to shift a lot of chip board up into the mezzanine attic. All to the beat of some great reggae music.

Still with time to spare we sanded wooden doors, washed metal shutters ready for painting, moved metals poles and sorted out tents/sleeping bags.

All in an evenings work. Great work everyone!

Thanks to Dave for back marking.

16 Saturday superstars bravely took on two tasks in one morning, building benches and prepping flower beds for St Werburghs Community Centre AND tidying up the wonderful Easton Community Gardens!

We met outside Roll for the Soul to be briefed by newly qualified run leader Alice Whale who took the group through a little warm up and split them into two teams.

6 brave soldiers decided they'd take the plunge and head 5km with Alice to St Werburghs Community Centre whilst the more energetic souls went for team Dave to go for the longer run to Easton Community Gardens.

Team soil in the bed

On arrival at St Werburghs Community Centre the brave soldiers were met by one of the centre's lovely team who ensured we all had a fun task to keep us busy. Keen to be a part of the centre's up and coming community open day next Saturday we quickly got stuck in with one team of 3 assigned to build a picnic bench and the other team to fill two brand new flower beds with soil.

And as if by magic, as soon as team bench started to tackle the picnic bench task, the sunshine came out in full force as if to support the requirement for sunshine and picnics.

Meanwhile team soil divvied up the task between them with some using shovels to fill up buckets and the others carrying the soil down to the flowerbeds.

With both teams spurred on by the sunny support, the team smashed this task in just half an hour leaving enough time to get out the big guns and move a rather hefty bag of soil out of the way and into the corner.

Of course it wouldn't be GoodGym without a bit of silliness and the teams couldn't resist testing out the new play tunnel built by one of the other volunteers that transforms you into a beautifully illustrated insect (you'll have to look at the photos to see what I mean)!

Team Weed-in the garden

As we ran over to Easton we were concerned that the run briefing today had not included "watch out for dinosaurs!" but we managed to shoofty past this particular obstacle just outside a garden centre.

Arriving at the Easton Community Garden, one of our favourite places in the whole of Bristol, we split into two groups.

One group got stuck into digging and clearing one corner of the garden, with Sion on barrow duty, Matt on shears, Mike and David on forks and Nick (fresh from backmarking us on our run) standing guard over a plant that needed keeping amongst a group of weeds that looked a bit like flowers. I checked later and the plant was still there, whilst the weeds had disappeared - Nick obviously did not let his guard down!

Meanwhile, Sarah, Will, Charlie and I weeded the pathways around the garden to help make them look nice and tidy, putting the waste into the compost box.

Then, as it was a warm and sunny morning, we took on some water, chilled for a photo and then trundled back down to town, at a reasonable lick, stopping only to get a photo with an imposter dinosaur (we weren't fooled!) - the real one had headed off to the zoo for some lunch. Nice!

Thanks for making it such a fun run today guys, you're all brilliant. But a special big shout out to Emma who's taking part in Bristol Night Ride tonight!

And nice one Alice on your first run lead! Top stuff!

An unseasonably warm evening greeted us for our last run of 2016 and my last run as the leader of the GoodGym pack. It was a bittersweet occasion; sadly our task was cancelled as the poor gentleman who was preparing leaflets for us to distribute was very poorly, so we used our back up plan of litter picking and went to clear a big area of cycle path and nearby streets.

Staggeringly, 31 people turned out for this run, which was simply fantastic given the time of year. Moreover, loads of us were sporting Santa hats, lights, bells, costumes or just big silly grins. Most of central Bristol was gridlocked as we ran, so hopefully we gave the car drivers sat in their cars something to smile about too! The highlight was our reindeer pack plus Santa - we had (thanks Emma for the list):
Alice as Cupid (complete with heart and bow)
Gary as Donner (without the kebab this time though)
Matt as Prancer (as he's so light footed)
Dave as Blitzen (complete with AWESOME lightning bolt tights)
Chloe as Dancer (wearing a fetching little tutu)
Caroline as Vixen (all in black so ninja deer)
Emma as Comet (the shootin stars on the leggings made the costume)
Paul as the big Ho Ho Ho himself (looking toasty in the Santa costume)
Debs as a slightly belated Elf (loved the hat, Debs)
And Mel as a Snowwoman (she mentioned that some kids wanted to follow us).

The pack headed off at a steady pace, with Mel and Dave being excellent back markers, and made our way over to an underpass for bikes in the industrial area of St Philips. Bin bags were grabbed, gloves were donned, and we split up in to a litter picking frenzy of activity. The park area I chose to head in to was reasonably tidy so we did the GoodGym thing of playing on the swings, slides and spinning thing.

25 minutes later and the place was well tidy. We headed back and finished up in Queen Square. As this was my last run, it would have been rude and frankly too nice of me to finish the run without some body conditioning work.. lunges and crab squats abounded, then tricep dips and press ups.

Then came the bit I'd been dreading... the farewell speech. I'd not prepared anything so waffled a bit, rambled a bit more, and generally tried to convey my massive gratitude to everyone who come or has ever come to GoodGym Bristol. There is nothing like GoodGym, and the people who turn up in the wind, the rain, the frost, on the hottest day of the year (2016 and 2015 were both years where we managed to run on the hottest day!), and in massive thunderstorms. The people who put up with smelly gloves, wonky wheelbarrows, plastic trowels and sometimes a bit of disorganisation.

It's you guys who have kept me going and loving our runs together. And then, to top it all, there were loads of other GoodGym runners who'd not made it out but came along to wish me well. And I got pressies - I LOVE my GoodGym rat on a bike t-shirt so much!!!!

Thank you, everyone.