Ah, what a lovely run! With the sun beaming down on us once again, loads of great people met up at Vivo Sports Club to run to the charity Emmeaus which is dedicated to helping homeless people finding employment and get themselves in to their own homes.

The run there was pleasantly uneventful, and we made it to our task in good time where we met with Jessica from Emmeaus who introduced us to the charity and also told us how to say the name! (Em-may-ous is the phonetic spelling). She handed up gloves and tools and the gang set to weeding all around the building.

She also kitted Darren and Chris L up in steel toe capped boots (that she just happened to have on hand....), gave them a sledgehammer and pointed them in the direction of some cobbles that needed smashing. DARREN SMASH! CHRIS SMASH! HULK SMASH...sorry, getting carried away.... Chips were flying everywhere, cobbles were obliterated, and then rest of the team dived in to clear the cobbles away as as fast as possible, in some cases using a random wok that they'd found.

They also planted some flowering shrubs; Jessica had planted a hydrangea a few weeks ago and no one had sat on it or squashed it, so she felt it was safe to plant a few more shrubs.

As they weeded, a lovely selection of rubbish was found. Today's highlights included:
A traffic cone.
Half a bottle of vodka
A full and unopened bottle of cider (rather nice cider, but no one wanted to drink it!).

We did a lot but there's still more to do, so we'll be back next week to continue smashing the cobbles (some of the ladies fancy a go!), trim bushes, weed and do random things with cooking implements.

Lastly HUGE congrats to Matthew, Emily and Kim who've done their 50th, 50th and 200th run respectively. Also a MAHOOOOSIVE Goodgym welcome to newbies Fran, Harriet, Debbie and Lisa. Thanks for coming to run with us and we hope you'll be back.

To check if you actually read this run report, next week the code word is 'pink wafers'. Say it to me at some point in the run. There's no prize, I just sometimes wonder who gets all the way to the end of my reports!

What a lovely run! It was hot for the first part as a seemingly endless horde of runners left Vivo Gym to run to the Childrens Scrapstore to sort...er... scrap! We found a great rhythm and were soon in the labyrinthine Scrapstore.

We were given several tasks to do - make toys safe by removing batteries, tags and other stuff, cutting up lengths of rope with a heated knife that smelt quite pungent, cutting up netting and fabric (which looked like a massive old tent!), taking thread from industrial sized cotton reels, and the GoodGym classic of taking water damaged phones out of boxes and sorting them in to their component parts - note that we've been to the Scrapstore around 8-10 times and every time we've had those phones to deal with. Well, they are NO MORE! The last 6 boxes were sorted. Phew!

As always at the Scrapstore, we found a variety of random and unexpected items - this time it was a cage full of shop floor dummy legs! These were used in our group photo at the end, and whilst there was a bit of a faff to get them back in to the warehouse, we warmed up by running up and down on the kerb just outside.

Running back was more pleasant - the heat had abated somewhat and we cooled off in Queens Square with a few exercises for our core, and a lovely lying down stretch sequence. As it had been my birthday the day before, the gang spared no expense and presented me with one of the Scrapstore phones, a tuft of rope and a bit of glitter. It almost brought a tear to my eye...

Massive mchugebig congratulations to Richard for making it to the grand number of 100 runs with GoodGym, and also belated happy birthday to my birthday twin Alex, who was also celebrating the day before!

An almighty 32 people gathered at Vivo for a run to a local food bank. What a great turnout, including several newbies - welcome to the GoodGym gang!

We set off at a sprightly pace to head to the food bank, which is based at a big yellow storage warehouse, however when we got there, our contact Alan was nowhere to be seen. We called him but got a voice mail message.

Oh no! Back up plan A (litter picking) was not applicable as I didn't have any bin bags or gloves, so we all grabbed a little bit of litter as we ran to make back up plan B happen (circuits around the city). We headed to a large open space at Temple Quay where two teams started to do a bit of shuttle running and lunges... but then Alan called back! And so we ran back to the bank where we met up with him. The fault was mine - I'd underestimated the pace that we were going to run at so we were early. I'm so sorry for all that extra running.

At the food bank we were tasked with sorting donated goods in to various types (canned goods, dried goods, toiletries, etc). Because this was one of those days, the task was completed in double quick time, so it seemed that no sooner had we arrived that we were leaving again, to re-tread some now very familiar routes back to Queens Square where we stretched out and finished our run.

A couple of massive congrats:
Ciara for getting to the food bank
Sion for her 50th run
Paul for his 100th run All the newbies for sticking with us
Everyone else who keeps coming back to GoodGym.

You all rock big time. Come back next week and rock some more!!!