Imagine opening Twitter this morning and finding out that we were behind a door of an actual advent calendar... and not just any calendar, the SMART WORKS CANNY CALENDAR! This set us up perfectly for our third visit to Smart Works Newcastle a fabulous charity in the heart of city that provides clothing and coaching to women to as they return to work. We have a brilliant partnership with Smart Works and we are always given a great variety of jobs to do when we get there.

A few reminders in the briefing and warm up tonight that I will re-remind you of here: 1. Please submit your votes for People's GoodGymer of GoodGym by private message or email before 17th December 2. Please don't leave Carol Anne feeling lonely at the Community Mission this Saturday. Pop along and lend a hand, there will be glitter and Christmassy treats! 3. Our last task of the year is December 17th followed by festive food and drinks, come along for both or either. 4. We now have enough donations for our #GGNCL flag which I will be ordering in the next few weeks- THANK YOU.

Charlotte took on her 30th good deed tonight, leading the walking group and earning herself the Walking in a Winter Wonderland badge (I'm not jealous at ALL) joined by two new members of the GoodGym family- the fab Katie and Helen- as well as Carol Anne and Niveditha. Meanwhile we negotiated the Christmas markets at Monument (how good did the food smell on the way back though OMG) and I managed to stop Ross from jumping on the teacups/weird slide thing/ferris wheel on Northumberland Street. There is something epic about running en masse through a bustling city centre that gives me goosebumps every time!

A warm welcome and 4 flights of stairs met us at Smart Works and we were given our jobs for the night: sorting through donations from the generous Geordies who have been dropping items off in huge numbers for Christmas time, steaming clothing with a very posh standing iron, tidying up clothes on the rails, general dusting and tidying in the fitting room and making up pamper packs of essential toileteries.

"Would I wear this for a job interview? - Nick, holding a pleated skirt "We might have known who'd be first to dress up" - everyone, looking at Dan in a dress

As always we had heaps of fun, not least by trying on some of the donations and finding out Dan can rock a summer dress and Evan's colour is knitted mint green. Task owner Michelle told us the difference we have made tonight would usually take the regular volunteers at Smart Works weeks to complete.. it took us just over half an hour! We were so pleased to help such a worthwhile cause and can't wait to go back in the new year.

Another bonus of visiting Smart Works is the ready-made fitness session space right outside and tonight we did a triple whammy of rock-paper-scissors (bringing out Emma's competitive side) running laps and a memory game of exercises. Who'd have thought a group of adults would have an amazing time playing playground games? In a car park? On a Monday night? In December? I WOULD!

Thanks everyone for another brilliant start to the week. There will be another chance to run or walk to do good deeds next Monday at our December visit to Newcastle University. Sign up here and get yourself along for guaranteed giggles.

Happy running!

It takes a lot of commitment to come to GoodGym on a Monday, after work, in the Summer.

It takes a bigger commitment to come when there's an England match on the telly!

Massive kudos to everyone who came along to the Group Run tonight where it was fab to welcome new runner Suzannah to the family. Our task was a simple one, run to the Quayside, clear up a section of the Cycle path for Sustrans , complete a fitness session and run back. Run, do good, get fit and look for weird things during the litter pick.

Charlotte led #TeamInjured on a short route and everyone else took the old tried and tested route by the Arena and down to the beautiful - but windy- Quayside, crossing over to Gateshead for the first time in Newcastle GoodGym history! We were met by Sarah from Sustrans and set to work for 30 minutes of speedy volunteering

Tanya managed to find a can of Hell, Liz bagged (literally) a steak knife but Weird Item of the Night accolade went to Paul, who found ...............

A POTATO

Sprints were the order of the day for the fitness session as we charged the Quayside path learning how best to use our upper body to pump the arms for maximum speed. Paul has some awesome photos of this session which we will pop on to the Facebook page later. Everyone channeled their inner Mo Farah for the session which Kate said was one of those times you don't think you want to do something, then it feels awesome, and you just want to keep going! Maddie's sprints were legendary tonight too!

So that's it for another week of Group Runs. Sign up to next week's run here and our FIRST Community Mission on Friday for the Jo Cox Foundation Here

Happy running! Anji x

No less than seven new runners for tonight's trek up Westgate Road to visit Changing Lives at Elliott House where we did our very first task back in April!

What a Group Run it was!

Using Paul extra-special hill-avoidance-but-still-uphill route, we ascended happily up Westgate Road and on to Elliott House with special mention going to Jasmine who did her first ever run outside of a gym. Nice work Jasmine!

As always, we were greeted with big smiles and clear instructions and sent straight off to work, with painting, kitchen cleaning and gardening the order of the day. There was absolutely no stopping Jonny from getting his hands on a paintbrush tonight!

35 glorious busy minutes passed by in the flash of a marigold and we were back off (downhill- yay!) to Summerhill park. The group once again showed their obviously competitive not competitive streaks in a quick game of Cops and Robbers, using their sprinting, turning and dodging techniques to avoid being "got" by the cops! Mark adding an extra edge of peril with his scary glossed-up hands. The hardest part was staying in the boundary of my poorly marked-out rectangle, that was actually a parallelogram, apparently.

More on names of shapes next week.

Excellent interval training!

Great work and energy tonight everyone. My face hurts from smiling. See you next week for the CVS envelope packing challenge. Sign up here

Happy running everyone! Anji