This week's fitness challenge was a team effort to reach one million steps. The team absolutely smashed it: between lockdown steps, hospital shifts, long runs and GoodGym missions, the crew put in a mighty amount of stepping around Bristol this week. We surpassed the one million effort easily and hit a grand total of:

1,635,217 STEPS!

Looks like we should have set a two million steps challenge...

Special thanks to Tim for pulling together our step tracker and well done to Roz who did more than 200,000 on her own and Russ who did more than 100,000 on his own. Check out some of the beautiful views Russ had during his steps above.

Sign up to this week's fitness challenge here!

It's Tuesday, it's Group Run night and it didn't rain! Woohoo! In other great news, we had Christin, Regina, Maddie and Jess join us for the first time tonight - welcome!

Once we got warmed up, we split the group into our two tasks for the night, Northern Slopes and The Southville Centre.

Alison took a hardy group of 15 to Northern Slopes where they were continuing their task which was started (in the middle of Storm Dennis) on Saturday. Although it wasn't quite Storm Dennis, it was still pretty windy and cold up there, but the hardcore group got to work shifting brambles and clearing a pathway for when their trees are planted, so they can protect the birds nesting in the area. The tea and biscuits which were provided after this cold hard work were very welcome, then the group made their way back to warm up further back at Workout.

Like watching paint dry

Meanwhile, it was GoodGym DIY SOS at The Southville Centre tonight, where Hugh had set us up with five chest of drawers to sand, varnish and repaint and a hallway to give a fresh lick of paint to. Amid in the pedestrians going to Taekwondo and French classes, the group got them done in no time, and as we switched the fitness to task groups at the half-way point, there was even time to get a second coat in.

The group got some impressive hill sprints squats, press ups and planks in during their fitness slots too. After that, it was time to head back and revel in our new up-cycling skills. Brilliant work everyone!

Bristol is no GoodGym group which only gets out to hit their new year's resolutions and January challenge goals: on our first run of February we had a massive 62 people join us to run and walk to do good. It was great to have a massive 10 new runners join us - welcome Chloe, Becky, Owen, Aidan, Steve, Beth, Reuben, Barnaby, Dom, Emma and Sophie! It was also great to have Ivo pop by on his travels to the South West - thanks Ivo!

Brooming marvellous

Alison stepped in to lead a group to Task 1 of the evening to Hannah More Primary. The group were tasked with making the place look spic and span, so it was all hands on brooms and all brooms on deck to get the place sweeped up and then everyone did a mass litter-pick of the grounds until it was spotless. They got this done so quickly they had time to do some relays on their return to get their heart rates up!

Meanwhile, Richard led the hardcore mob up (and up) to Task 2 in Clifton to do some leafleting for Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Not only did they conquer the hills, they also delivered 400 leaflets around the area - phwoar.

I introduce you to: The Red Barrows

Melanie was leading the walking group to do some additional jobs at Redcliffe Nursery, where we had helped last week. The group had a huge long list of tasks to get through, but there was so much sand from the sandpit which had been blown all over the playground in the recent bad weather, that they spent their whole session clearing this all back into the sandpit. Oh, and importantly setting aside some time to choreograph GoodGym's very own aerobatics display team, the impressive Red Barrows.

Sally is waiting for you

The rest of us headed up the cycle path for Task 3, helping The Matthew Tree Project with our regular donation sorting. The team were split into groups for tin-sorting (or sor-tin more like), crate washing and separating the food donations into food type. Everyone was also lucky enough to get a chance to meet Sally for a quick (but who knew 3 minutes and 25 seconds could feel so long?) session of Sally Up Sally Down. Gary admired how well Matt scrubbed up, and we all headed back on our way.

Once back, it was time for a good stretch off and for our GoodGym Eats for this month to Turtle Bay organised by Clo - thanks Clo!

There was no drought about it, even though tonight's run numbers were slightly dampened by, well, the damp, we still made up quite a cloud. 50 GoodGymers turned up to hold on to our second place rain in the January challenge and we got lots of new hardy people join us for their first session too - welcome to Nicola, Liz, Natalie, Liana and Sasha!

There was no raining on our parade: we got warmed up with a complicated maths warm up, and then headed on our short run to St Thomas's Church to help the Churches Conservation Trust while Alice led a group on a longer 7km round trip run to help the British Heart Foundation with donation sorting.

Once the donation sorters got all the way up Gloucester Road they were separated into different groups for donation sorting. It required some imagination at first to work out the methods but they soon got into the swing of it, making a dent in the huge pile of donations which need to be sorted before another 100 bags arrive later in the week, and finding a body-less teddy bear along the way - spooky...

Once the church scrubbers had made their way through three exercise stations on the short run there, we were met by Ed and split into groups for removing wax from all of the church floors and dusting, sweeping and hoovering the rest of the church. Ed had the tunes pumping and before long the church looked much better, a few cups of tea had been drunk and it was time for a detour route back ft. hills, stair climbs and LOTS of rain. Eventually we headed back to gain shelter and to celebrate Art getting his 50th Good Deed tonight and Lexi's delayed centurion celebrations for her 100th Good Deed on Saturday! MASSIVE well done to you both!

We headed to Bambalan for our first GoodGym Eats of the year, where we realised it had been abreeze. Although there did continue to be a chance of (warm, hot) showers for 50 sodden GoodGymers.