With the stormy weather threatening to stick around, sign ups for tonights run were looking a little thin, but some clear skies and a break in the wind meant a cracking 26 people came along to get involved!

With just a few minutes before our meet-up time, it was looking like this could be our quietest ever turnout, but thankfully it was just some heavy traffic, and there was a late surge of GoodGymers to bolster the ranks. We welcomed one new runner tonight, Darla, who picked a particularly chilly night to come along for her first taste of GoodGym! Nice one Darla!

Tonight also saw Adam miss his first ever Group run since our launch leaving taskforce keen-bean Katie as the only ever-present (Ok I've been there every week too, but I don't really count).

Our task tonight was to deliver the remaining leaflets for St. Gemma's Hospice, to let even more people know about the great things they do in and around Leeds. The plan was to split into three groups, all heading for slightly different target streets, to deliver as many of the leaflets as possible.

We warmed up with a little bit of mirroring to get us moving, but also to help us think about our co-ordination and reactions. We slowly built in intensity and had a few curveballs in there, such as working only one side of the body or standing on one leg.

We then split ourselves into groups and were on our way. The Meanwood crew were away first heading off into the Sunset (or more accurately heading towards the Sunsets - Sunset Road, Sunset Avenue, Sunset Mount etc). Their route was definitely the furthest and included some pretty tough hills, so they were keen to make a head start.

The other two groups had a slightly more leisurely start, but were soon on their way. Once we all arrived at our locations and worked out our plan of attack so we didn't miss any houses or, even worse, leaflet the same house twice, we set about our task. Having leafletted before, most of the group knew exactly what to do, and some had even come prepared.

"You need to have your trusty wooden spoon" George, waving around his utensil excitedly.

It isn't clear if George has now made this his 'leaflet delivering spoon', or he goes home and stirs his spag bol with it, but either way I think we'll be seeing the spoon again!

As I tried to run around between groups to see as much of the action as possible, it was great to see the teamwork on display with lots of chatter about which houses had been ticked off already. As it was by now pretty dark, the small groups of two's and three's were usually heard before they were seen. Newbie Darla was immediately getting involved, and Minnie in particular took charge of her small crew, making sure they didn't get lost in their maze of a route. Despite the risk of getting lost everyone seemed to be having a great time.

"I love the leapfrogging! It's so much fun!" Rach D, getting a bit too excited about posting leaflets.

There was lots of racing in front of each other to be the first to a house, which just goes to show you all want to make your own fun! Over in the Hollin lane group, they were battling with the long driveways, hilly steps, and just generally struggling to find the postboxes in the dark! In what should probably become our motto as a group from now on, Rachael C (accidentally, I think) summed up the whole GoodGym spirit.

"We may run out of leaflets, but we will never run out of enthusiasm!" Rachael, apparently doing her best impersonation of Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

With all the leaflets delivered, everyone made their way back to base. After a quick debrief and a a stretch, we were all on our way.

Don't forget there is a Community Mission on Friday, a parkrun meet-up at Fountains Abbey on Saturday, and a Hilly training session on Sunday! So much for you all to get involved with.

Thanks for another great session, see you all next week, if not before!

This was our first ever leafleting task, which meant lots of extra logistics and guesstimating runners' speed and posting efficiency, but thankfully it all seemed to work out OK in the end.

Before setting off tonight, there was loads to celebrate. The January challenge was over and an incredible 70 Leeds GoodGymers combined to complete a whopping 194 good deeds, which is absolutely amazing. This placed us 13th overall in the GoodGym area league table, which is incredible considering we've only been going for just over 4 months.

Riobhne reached her 10th Good Deed (and was nonchalant as ever about it). Great work Riobhne! We also welcomed Rachel to a group run for the first time since she hit 50 Good Deeds, which meant the grand unveiling of GoodGym Leeds' very own Cape of Good Deeds. In a tradition started by GoodGym York, we like to celebrate our runners amazing achievements by making them look like the superheroes they are for one night only. Our very own cape comes complete with sparkles and superhero mask. You wore it well Rachel!

It was also great to welcome one brand new runner to the group tonight, everyone go and give Emily a cheer!

With all of the celebrating out of the way, it was time to get on with the tricky business of delivering leaflets! We had already split into four groups, with each crew aiming for a slightly different area. Rachel and Liz's group were staying close to Hyde Park, Adam was taking his crew to Headingley, Katie and Heather's team were heading for the bottom end of meanwood, while Aron's gang was pushing on to the centre of meanwood.

The leaflets were all about raising awareness of some of the fundraising events that St. Gemma's Hospice put on during the year. St. Gemma's is the argest Hospice in Yorkshire, and one of the largest in the country, and earlier in the week, Pete from St. Gemma's had explained why the events are so important.

"St Gemma's needs over £10m each year to cover our costs, and about £6m of that needs to come from fundraising." Pete, task owner, St. Gemma's Hospice.

With the leaflets distributed, and the warnings to look out for dogs ringing in everyone's ears, we were off! A few runners looked slightly strange carrying their trusty wooden spoons almost like relay batons, but they were clearly in the know, as this would hopefully help them to avoid any nasty scrapes or cuts in letterboxes. The routes had been planned so that 3 off the groups would actually set off in the same direction before splitting up later on. The run took us down the super-steep North Grange Mount, which is definitely on the cards for hill reps once we get to summer!

By now, we'd all separated out into our individual groups, and found our way to our first delivery points. The highlights of the evening included:

• George getting so excited about delivering leaflets that he gave himself a nosebleed.
• Riobhne getting so excited about delivering leaflets that she ran into a tree.
• Rob finding a stack of leaflets after we thought we'd finished, and then getting excited because it meant we could deliver more leaflets.

From the sounds of things each of the groups found their own rhythms and techniques, with some choosing the leapfrog method, while others chose to take opposite sides of the street for a more pure experience of solo delivery. Some runners were discovering the perils of the impossible to find letterboxes (obviously they receive their mail by carrier pigeon, or Harry Potter-style with owls dropping them at the breakfast table), while other runners were just appreciating the beautiful houses and gardens.

"I liken the lichen" new runner Emily getting into the swing of things with puns on the run.

As well as delivering leaflets for St. Gemma's we had a few posters to deliver for the Children's Heart Surgery Fund, advertising their Wear Red Day. On the way back from our various routes, we stopped in the various pubs, cafes and shops to ask them to display a poster, with Rachel's superhero cape proving a real crowd pleaser!

With well over 1,000 leaflets delivered, we all returned to base for a bit of a debrief. It sounds like everyone enjoyed it, although some came away with mixed feelings.

"It just felt like we were robbers the way we were running away from the houses in the dark!" Katie.

With that we finished off with a stretch before heading to the pub to swap stories and celebrate our many accomplishments.

The Strava Flyby of the route is really fun, you can see everyone heading off in completely different directions and speeding up and slowing down as we stopped at each house to post. You should definitely check it out!

The cold weather has definitely hit us now, but the promise of an indoor task seems to have done the trick and we had a great turnout of 23 runners! This was our first week with no new runners, which is something we definitely have to remedy over the next couple of weeks. Time to start talking your friends, colleagues and random people you meet on a bus into coming down to join us!

There was loads of news to share this week. In just our 11th group run, Leeds has hit 300 good deeds! Give yourselves a pat on the back! Also, our taskforce more than doubled this week, with Carol, Adam and Katie joining the ranks, taking us up to 5! There's also a christmas social booked in for the last task of the year so get signing up to that. Fancy dress is very much encouraged.

With the news shared, we returned to the Big Wave warm-up, with some squats, star jumps, lunges and general incoordination amongst the group. We'll get there eventually!

We headed out by the now familiar route down towards Kirkstall, as lots of tasks have been falling in a similar area. Rach was back running, which is great to see, but she took the sensible option of backmarking on her return.

The run down was a lovely, steady, chatty one, and we all arrived ready and excited for our task. After a late change of plan during the day, we were no longer headed to the Abbey for marquee decorating, but would instead be doing some tasks at the community centre.

We arrived to find a huge table full of toys of all shapes and sizes, some with pieces missing, some looking like they were missing their friends, and some just looking plain weird. Our job was to find all the right pieces, devise a way to sort them and then to put them into big plastic containers. The second task of painting some decorations was hampered by the fact there was a choir rehearsing in the room next door. The gang got on with the job of sorting the toys, first working out how to separate them up, and then putting them all neatly in the correct boxes. In the meantime, Aron tried his best to look choir-like as he sneaked through to collect the painting materials.

"Are you sure you don't want to join in with us?" Choir member trying to get trainer Aron to do even less work.

Aron resisted the temptation to take up singing, and instead hastily repositioned the painting task from the choir rehearsal space to the kitchen and by now the toys were pretty much done! Magic! Everyone grabbed a paintbrush (of varying size and usefulness) and got down to painting. Some techniques were questionable to say the least, with some people resorting to finger painting, and others pouring the paint directly onto the decorations.

"I call it the squirt and smear method" George.

With the Christmas tunes playing, and everyone squeezing into any available painting surface to finish their masterpieces, there was a lovely atmosphere. Two GoodGymers were not quite satisfied with the sorting that the group had done with the toys, and set about making some small tweaks (or possibly just playing with the toys). Heather found herself a hamster that she looked pretty pleased with, while Rach looked for the creepiest toys she could find.

"I don't really like dolls, to be honest" Rach, with a shopping trolley full of dolls next to her.

With both tasks wrapped up we paused for a quick photo with our creations (and creepy toys) before heading out into the night.

There was just time for a quick round of Sally Squats, with the group not believing that the song could possibly be that long. Sally squats will return, and next time we're going to get the whole way through the song!

The run back up the hill was steady on our already-burning quads, but a few pushed on for a speedy finish.

After a quick stretch and a debrief, we headed out into the night, already excited about getting even more Christmassy next week!

The promise of staying around for a drink after tonight's session obviously convinced enough people to run with us this week and we had a bumper turnout. 32 runners were part of our amazing crew, including Leah and Suzie who both joined us for the first time. Go and give them a cheer!

This week's task was in aid of 'The Lost Plot', who use gardening at their allotment to offer an alternative to traditional talking therapies for people in sustainable recovery. We were tasked with collecting as many leaves as possible which the group could then use to turn into leaf mulch. There was no task-owner on site with us, which meant trainer Aron went wild with the power.

The whole group was split into 5 teams with their tasks as follows:

• To collect as many leaves as possible in their teams, and deliver them up the hill to the allotment before the time ran out.
• To come up with an excellent team name - as it's GoodGym, ideally a pun.
• To take a great team photo.
• To come up with an inventive exercise that they could demonstrate to the group.
• Bonus points would be awarded for excellent teamwork, camaraderie and general excellent banter.

There was also the promise of a fabulous secret prize for the winning team, which really got everyone's head's in the game. After a quick warm-up demonstrating some potentially inefficient leaf collecting techniques, we were off.

The allotment is in Hyde Park/Woodhouse moor, which roughly 100m away from our start location, so we took a slightly scenic route to the allotment to make sure we were all thoroughly warmed up for our task. We pointed out where the leaves needed to be left and headed down to the edge of the park where there were loads of leaves and a bit more light.

Armed only with gardening gloves and some bags, the teams were free to collect leaves wherever they wanted, and on Aron's shout, each group raced off to claim their own patch. With the 30 minutes of frantic leaf counting underway, it looked like the breakneck pace might prove unsustainable.

"It's like the crystal maze!" Goodgymer whose name was lost in the melee.

Bags were being filled quicker than we could count them, and they were stuffed full to the brim. After realising we definitely weren't going to have enough bags to last us the full 30 minutes, the decision was taken to start running the bags up the hill before emptying them into one gigantic pile, and then refilling them.

After the initial buzz started to fade, thoughts turned to the other tasks the groups had been set. Here's what they all came up with:

• Team 1 - Don't stop beleafing

Exercise - frog squat/leaf collecting

Photo - team frog squat with added leaf throwing

• Team 2 - The Unbeleaveables

Exercise - erratically falling leaves with wide stance fast feet

Photo - Team tree, with a two person trunk, and everyone else as leaves.

• Team 3 - Mulch ado about nothing

Exercise - Tree pose

Photo - group tree hug

• Team 4 - Don't stop beleafing (again)

Exercise - choreagraphed workout (The Monster Mulch) with 3 exercises set to the music of Journey

Photo - Boomerang of leaf throwing with added musical accompaniment

• Team 5 - Mulch ado about nothing (again)

Exercise - Curtsy squats (another gloriously inefficient leaf collecting technique)

Photo - leaf throwing action shot

By now, a huge pile of leaves was forming and with 5 minutes to go, teams started collecting closer to the allotment gate, with everyone congregating around the two trees that were closest. As the final countdown commenced, everyone raced into the finish line to make sure their leaves counted. The final pile was enormous, and even though Team 1 tried to keep their own pile separate, eventually common sense prevailed and all the leaves were piled in together.

We got a quick snap of the whole group before heading down to the corner of the park where the teams demonstrated their exercises. There was wonderful mix of strength, endurance and even flexibility, and so obviously this had to be a group workout. We started with the Monster Mulch's high energy, before running through each of the exercises and finishing with the relative calm of the tree pose. All of the exercises were 'creative' and left people surprisingly tired. Awesome work everyone.

We jogged back to our start location for a stretch and the big reveal of our winners! Despite picking a team name that was shared by another team, the judges were impressed by their commitment to a theme, and with everything either about or set to the music of Journey's Don't Stop Believing, there could only be one winner. Team 4, Don't stop beleafing took home the Curly the Caterpillar cake, and more importantly the glory!

We all then moved inside to the warm of the pub for a drink and a chat to fully debrief the day's evening's events, and the winning team even shared their spoils! What a team.