A dazzling dozen runners smashed a 5k run to the St Werburghs Community Centre to help out at a volunteer day to continue to develop the outside area around the centre

Great to have Hannah along today for her first Bristol run, having been a regular with the Hackney group before moving to our fair city last year. Also good to see Declan with us again after a little break. Hope you both enjoyed being back with the GoodGym gang.

It was all going on today and there was pretty much something for everyone as we were welcomed at the community centre by the lovely Goska who had prepared a list of tasks for us to get stuck into.

One group got straight into shifting two planting boxes which involved moving a lot of the soil within the boxes until they were just about light enough to be dragged across the ground to new homes where they were refilled.

Another were moving picnic tables - we were hoping to build some but the bolts had done a runner (maybe they had bolted?) and so this was not possible.

Hannah and Charlene were moving unwanted rubbish into a skip and were then joined by the picnic table shifters to lift some really heavy garden bags into the skip, with a combined heave and roll action.

With the planting boxes in place, it was time to lug some timber blocks over to build a wooden wall around them, although we were tempted to have a game of giant jenga with these! Nick and Sarah also managed to put some of the larger timber into exercise use to perform some pretty impressive squats.

During this, Deb and Declan got on with watering the plants around the front of the centre, whilst Hannah and Charlene moved onto weeding the area and David tackled an overgrown bush on the roadside.

With a quick sweep up and group photos, we were back on our way to Roll For The Soul where we stretched lower and upper body, all of which had been put to good use today before half the group settled down to a very well earned lunch and some of the others headed of to do some more good on an afternoon mission, including Sarah and Charlene who were doing their first GG mission.

We should hopefully be back at the centre in a couple of weeks to help them prepare for an open day with food and festivities with an option, for those who want to, to stay and enjoy the event.

This was a great task today and really demonstrated GoodGym at it's brilliant best - nice one everyone!

8 Great GoodGymers ran 5k to help build a radio station and paint the ceiling of a whole floor of The Hive during Re:Generation festival 2016.

So the morning started well with 4 of the Team embarking on 5 super speedy loops of Highbury Fields. Personal Best performances from Patrick Luong 21:15 and Frances Powrie 25:31 set the tone and a big congratulations to Jenny Gorbatsevich for her Parkrun debut in 31:47.

We quickly got ourselves ready and ran 3k to The Hive to start the task. We met the rest of the gang and got stuck straight in! The Hive was a sea of activity with so many social enterprises in one huge building setting up for the day. We got rolling with some serious high painting action on the 3rd floor ceilings. While Graham and Julia made a quick sprint down to Russell Brands Cafe to pick up some donated bananas to be Juced by the amazing Square Root who were keeping us well hydrated as we worked. The painting was going at a hectic pace while the rest of the team run across the road to pick up probably the heaviest 5 sheets of sound proof boarding known to man then somehow carried them up to the 4th floor. Next came 21 planks of wood then 5 more slightly lighter but just as awkward to manoeuvre boards all to the top floor. These materials are to be the basis for the building of a radio station that will be based at the Hive! The ceilings were getting covered at great neck speed, part was flying as we were on a deadline to get the room ready for a graffiti artist to come and do his thing and produce a mural on the back wall. Then came the emergency call that our help was needed to go and collect some more food donations so that Food Cycle could work there magic and produce an amazing 3 course meal for all the Re:Generation attendees. Patrick and Graham made there way to collect the heavy tray full of goodness and returned back in no time. After 90 minutes of frenetic action we had painted 70% of the ceiling, carried 10 huge boards, 21 long wooden planks of wood up 4 floors and completed 2 food missions! Great Job Team!!

We cleared away and went for a crusing 5k run along the canal to loosen out our well worked limbs. After the run food was on our minds and we were being treated very from our friends at Re:Generation as with live music being played we tucked into a 3 course lunch and sweet orange and banana smoothie. After a quick interview with Radio 4 who were covering the event and we were on our way. Lots of Work, lots of Good, lots of Food and whole lot of Fun.

Cruise Smooth

Joel