The Santa Dash has been a regular fixture in the Goodgym Liverpool Christmas calendar, and this time we were participants and fundraisers. This event grows and grows - we heard over the tannoy that with over 11,000 Santas, this is the largest Dash in the world!

Steph, Clara, Miriam, Dike, Rachel and Bekah donned the red suits to run, and Pauline and Steph showed their colours with blue suits to walk the route with friends and family. Leonardo was intrigued by the idea of thousands of Santas running around the city centre, and came out to support the runners and see it for himself - yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. We passed pubs already full of Santas, and Leo was surprised at how early the Santas had started on the beer. Those of us more familiar with the dash - less so.

We were fundraising for The Choir With No Name, a choir for those impacted by homelessness or otherwise marginalised by society. Each week the choir meet for a cuppa and a catch up, choir practice, then sit down to share a hot meal. With a budget of less than £40 to feed up to 55 people (!) this type of fundraising makes a real difference. At the time of writing, the Goodgym Liverpool team have collectively raised over £775, a fantastic amount which will go directly to the Liverpool chapter we've volunteered with before.

It was a pleasure to meet Rachel for the first time, who was instrumental in the fundraising and contributed some very generous donations. Lovely to meet you Rachel - we hope to see you at a Goodgym task soon.

The Santas worked their way around the route through the city centre, and even the rain couldn't dampen the festive spirit and the streets were lined with people cheering us on. We were serenaded by a choir, treated to live music, joined by stilt walkers and the running Santas even struck up their own songs as they ran (no mean feat). Due to terrible planning, this was Bekah's third 5k in 26 hours (with Sally Ann partly to blame for making those stickers so damn appealing at yesterday's Goodgym monthly parkrun), but this was the big one, and with the thought of all those generous donations pushing her on, she was able to dash the dash and finish the third and final run of the weekend. Several of our runners were either new to 5ks or getting back into it gradually, and everyone put in a fantastic effort and exceeded their own expectations - we came away with some well deserved medals!

It's a lovely event, super fun to see the Santas all over the city and such wonderful community spirit. See you next year!

P.S. many thanks to Clara for the winning pun!

We arrived at the Princes Park run on a wet Saturday morning. It had been cancelled but a lot of people were milling around unaware Sallyann went into promo mode and handed out goodgym leaflets. She managed to recruit three people to the goodgym special run, Lillika, Daniel and Dan. Sallyann , Steph and Bekah embarked on the run with the three new friends while Lucien Leonardoand Miriam walked to the final meeting spot, the Oasis cafe in Sefton Park. The runners ran out of Princes park, did a lap of Sefton and then ran to the cafe. For Bekah and Steph this was one of multiple 5Ks this weekend with the Santa Dash on Sunday morning and Bekah taking on a third this afternoon. Steph was really pleased with her result today as she had wanted to run under 40mins and managed a 37mins. Lillika, Daniel and Dan didn’t join us for breakfast but Ellie came along just in time for the awarding of stickers. Lucien celebrated a full card of stickers- 12 for 12 months of park runs plus a bonus red glittery sticker for the added park run we did when our London friends were visiting. Bekah nearly filled her card just one off, Eleanor gained a fifth sticker and Leo confessed to washing his card in the washing machine. So aside from an addiction to stickers what is the incentive to collect stars?… Sallyann suggested that there might be some awards at the Christmas party this week! There was some discussion about next year’s park runs, what cafes we could go to. Looking forward to another year of park runs.

It was my third visit to Mr K. I was a bit early because I’d been Christmas shopping locally with my sister. It had been a frosty morning so I wasn’t sure if the grass would he too wet to mow. I got to Mr K’s and asked if he’d like me to tackle the front or the back. He said while it’s dry we could get the back done. It was dry and the frost had long since gone. The worst of the grass had been cut in a previous visit but there were long tufts of grass at the edges that were more tricky to tackle. I got stuck in with the strimmer and managed to get the tufts cut. With a bit of raking I even managed to re-establish the borders of the lawn. Mr K spotted a sycamore tree that had started growing so I cut that back. Mr K was helpful as always but I urged him to get into the warm because it was a really cold afternoon. Once I’d done I chatted with Mr K and we exchanged Christmas cards which was my first card of the season! I advised Mr K that we could leave the back now until the spring but I could make another winter visit for the front.

I can't quite believe that it's a year ago since we made our way through the snow to The Arts Bar to make paper chain starter packs for children and young people who are going to be staying in hospital over the Christmas period. Yet the calendar says it is a year and the temperature drop this morning meant although we had no snow it did feel seasonally cold enough to get together with Christmas paper, pens, Christmas stamps and the ever present cheesy Christmas jokes.

Ellie did tell us that last year she had learnt a lot of the jokes and told them at all her christmas dinners and parties. She is a little concerned that she has less invites this year.... were the jokes really that cheesy or was it the way she told them?

Whilst some were saddened by the white hot chocolate being off the menu this year we all managed to find warming drinks to help us through the task plus cheesy jokes, and talks of our own Christmas party coming up on 11th December. Before we knew it we had to start to clear up there was a last minute scramble to get to 300 strips completed (and ever enthusiastic Pauline is going to do more tomorrow before the send off deadline).

We finished just in time to hand the space over for the open mic session.. despite encouragement we couldn't persuade Jess to stay on and get on stage.... we all left with no one taking to the stage this time.

Out into the cold night all feeling a little more festive thanks to the paperchain project.