We were helping the organisers of the Saltford Santa Dash. This year the charities being supported were Jessie May Children's Hospice at Home and Mind.

We were marshalling and directing runners, collecting donations in buckets and cheering on and encouraging the runners.

It was great to see so many people running for charity in their Santa outfits! We were also provided with a santa hat to help us get into the festive spirit!

The event had around 1,000 runners and is expected to raise thousands of pounds for charity!

We had lots of fun and can't wait to go back next year!

On a dark and cold Tuesday evening, 19 volunteers ran to St Mark’s Church in Widcombe to paint the railings that surround the building. This importance maintenance work needs doing regularly, so GoodGym were called in to do the job! We worked hard in teams to cover all of the railings were were assigned. Our host, Phillipa, was incredibly happy with our work and we hope to come back soon to help out again!

Welcome to Abbey and Cameron!

We welcomed two new runners tonight, Abbey and Cameron. We were delighted to welcome them to the group at the beginning of the session. Both of them heard about GoodGym through a friend so if you know anyone that would be interested make sure to invite them along to join us!

After a quick warm-up we ran along the River Avon, across Widcombe Parade and met Phillipa outside the church.

Don’t paint on my parade!

This Group Run followed on from our task last week where we visited the church to scrub the old paint off of the railings. Phillipa and Alex, our hosts, kindly had all the paint and brushes set up for us. We donned some gloves and broke off into teams of 2-3 people to paint sections of the railings.

The church is frequently used by a variety of community groups for all-manner of activities. There are dog training classes, a children’s pre-school group and ballet classes. This task was important as we helped make sure the railings are insulated against the weather conditions so that the church can remain open and safe for all to benefit from.

Paint-ron saints of volunteering!

With our classic GoodGym enthusiasm and work ethic we finished most of the task earlier than expected. This meant there was time for more running for those that wanted it! At GoodGym we cater for all abilities and so when some of the group asked to do some more training Emma volunteered to take them up to Holloway to do some Hill Reps. This is a great technique to efficiently get some good exercise; especially if you live in hilly Bath!

After thanking Phillipa for hosting us, some of us ran back a longer route via Pultney Road, Great Pultney Street and then along the river back to the Leisure Centre.

Walk Leader

Thanks to Emily for very kindly volunteering to be our Walk Leader tonight. We had some takers who appreciated this new element of the Group Runs. This is a new feature of the Group Runs where members of Taskforce will lead a walking group to the task and back from the task. Members of Taskforce can sign up as a Walk Leader online when they sign up to a task.

Thanks to Chris for backmarking for us and thanks to Emma for leading the Hill Rep running session. And thanks to Joe for this week's pun!

Next week

Next week we are flyering for Send a Cow. They are to advertise their places in the Bath Half marathon. Sign up here!

Community Missions

• On Saturday 24th November we are flyering for Age UK. Sign up here!

We have organised a really fun pair of Christmas-themed Community Missions:

• On Saturday 1st December we will be helping set up the Saltford Santa Dash. Sign up here!
• We also be helping to marshall the event the following day on Sunday 2nd December. Sign up here!

Social Media

Please like/follow us on social media and share/retweet our content! We are on Facebook and Twitter

Organisations are already getting in contact with us through these platforms and this means we are securing more varied tasks for you to enjoy!