Imagine opening Twitter this morning and finding out that we were behind a door of an actual advent calendar... and not just any calendar, the SMART WORKS CANNY CALENDAR! This set us up perfectly for our third visit to Smart Works Newcastle a fabulous charity in the heart of city that provides clothing and coaching to women to as they return to work. We have a brilliant partnership with Smart Works and we are always given a great variety of jobs to do when we get there.

A few reminders in the briefing and warm up tonight that I will re-remind you of here: 1. Please submit your votes for People's GoodGymer of GoodGym by private message or email before 17th December 2. Please don't leave Carol Anne feeling lonely at the Community Mission this Saturday. Pop along and lend a hand, there will be glitter and Christmassy treats! 3. Our last task of the year is December 17th followed by festive food and drinks, come along for both or either. 4. We now have enough donations for our #GGNCL flag which I will be ordering in the next few weeks- THANK YOU.

Charlotte took on her 30th good deed tonight, leading the walking group and earning herself the Walking in a Winter Wonderland badge (I'm not jealous at ALL) joined by two new members of the GoodGym family- the fab Katie and Helen- as well as Carol Anne and Niveditha. Meanwhile we negotiated the Christmas markets at Monument (how good did the food smell on the way back though OMG) and I managed to stop Ross from jumping on the teacups/weird slide thing/ferris wheel on Northumberland Street. There is something epic about running en masse through a bustling city centre that gives me goosebumps every time!

A warm welcome and 4 flights of stairs met us at Smart Works and we were given our jobs for the night: sorting through donations from the generous Geordies who have been dropping items off in huge numbers for Christmas time, steaming clothing with a very posh standing iron, tidying up clothes on the rails, general dusting and tidying in the fitting room and making up pamper packs of essential toileteries.

"Would I wear this for a job interview? - Nick, holding a pleated skirt "We might have known who'd be first to dress up" - everyone, looking at Dan in a dress

As always we had heaps of fun, not least by trying on some of the donations and finding out Dan can rock a summer dress and Evan's colour is knitted mint green. Task owner Michelle told us the difference we have made tonight would usually take the regular volunteers at Smart Works weeks to complete.. it took us just over half an hour! We were so pleased to help such a worthwhile cause and can't wait to go back in the new year.

Another bonus of visiting Smart Works is the ready-made fitness session space right outside and tonight we did a triple whammy of rock-paper-scissors (bringing out Emma's competitive side) running laps and a memory game of exercises. Who'd have thought a group of adults would have an amazing time playing playground games? In a car park? On a Monday night? In December? I WOULD!

Thanks everyone for another brilliant start to the week. There will be another chance to run or walk to do good deeds next Monday at our December visit to Newcastle University. Sign up here and get yourself along for guaranteed giggles.

Happy running!

I just wanted to do something good with my free time!

... and new member Daniel did just that tonight. Kudos for joining us on not only our longest run to date but possibly our coldest too!

It was typically brisk tonight for our last run of November so I kept the intro short (not like me, I know) before leading us off on a run so epic we had three possible routes there and none of them particularly scenic. Surely running down the Felling Bypass is best kept for the Great North Run only?! I have to give a special shout out to Liz who was a little worried she wouldn't keep up tonight, yet Queen Backmarker Charlotte and her were never more than two steps behind! The rain held off but that didn't stop us needing to dodge a million puddles.

On arrival at the Age UK Gateshead dementia hub, we were met by Carol Anne at her first post-op Good Deed, and the brilliant Julie from Age UK. She was every GoodGym trainer's dream: totally organised, materials laid out and tasks written on a clear plan so we wasted no time. Everyone was on painting duty for this one: Charlotte painting a Stage door, Dave painting a church door, and micro teams brushing up walls with bright blues and orange to match the Age UK logo. A few teams were squished into tiny doorways and corridors and suddenly the cold outside was forgotten. I especially liked the team that had their own personal baby gate to keep them hemmed into place!

It was so great having the Dynamic Duo Charlotte and Carol Anne back together, especially so that Charlotte could relay the story of our super-cute mission to Mr S's house yesterday.

The Dementia Hub is just a few weeks away from their big opening day and it was so brilliant to have a big team like this on task and having fun. We were able to complete all of the jobs in the time set...

And we only managed to break one roller!

We are planning to return to the Dementia Hub for a series of community missions in January, and group runs to look after a patch of their HUGE garden in the spring and I already can't wait. A brilliant task where we were able to see the impact we can make straight away while we start our week the best way possible.

See you all next week for our return to Smart Works Newcastle Remember, next week is walkable so try to bring along a beginner and show off our wonderful community at one of our favourite tasks.

Happy running and walking Anji x

Like stats? Love GoodGym? You've come to the right place!

Tonight we started our Group Run with a bunch of amazing stats courtesy of our resident statistician Andrew to motivate us on a cold and windy night in the Toon. Hold on to your hats, these are some great numbers! As we approach our 6 month anniversary and before we ran tonight, we had racked up:

• 641 Good Deeds
• 33 good deeds JUST by Carol Anne, meaning as a solo GoodGym runner she accounts for 5% of Good Deeds at GoodGym Newcastle!
• Total Group Run distance: 2644.5km
• In just six months, in distance we have travelled all the way to Istanbul in relay (swim and run) or 1/4 way around the moon.

It was also our 11th Changing Lives task and a new project for us at Gifford House. Is that enough numbers for now?

It was the first time we've run over the High Level Bridge and as if by magic the police had closed it off for us (nothing to do with the broken down bus, honest) and what a lovely trot across it was! Up the hill, via the high street in Gateshead we managed to stay together, shaking off the Monday blues after a paired game in the warm up to welcome three new runners to the family. Massive welcome Hannah, Chloe and Ellen!

Our destination was another Changing Lives project, Gifford House. Gifford House provides accommodation with 24/7 support for males ages 18+. There are 11 bedrooms and they can live for up to 2 years at Gifford during which time they are encouraged to get involved with training and preparation to employment. Our tasks tonight were:

• Kitchen deep clean including the oven
• Vacuum the stairs, living room and corridors
• Plant bulbs and tidy/weed the garden
• Living room clean up including skirting boards, furniture and shelving.

With 25 of us getting stuck in the task seemed to fly by, one of the residents commenting,

"There are more than 3 times the usual amount of people in this house! It's unreal!"

I have to give a special mention to Liz tonight for commitment to her task as after cleaning the kitchen floor, she realised she had forgotten her jacket, and after tip toeing back through the kitchen, returned to clean it again. Top marks for effort Liz!

We are always spoiled with drinks and snacks from Changing Lives and after dragging Michael away from the custard creams we were thanked by Changing Lives staff who told us the difference we made was huge.

"I just have to say, I think what you all do is amazing"

It was a lovely easy run back down the hill via more emergency services (fire engines this time if anyone's playing 999 bingo!) before we found a spot to complete everybody's (nobody's) favourite fitness session THE DREADED HILL REPEATS SESSION Hills are great. They make you work hard, elevate your heart rate, build endurance and stamina and make you feel epic. It just always takes a little convincing! Group hills were completed first followed by an epic Kenyan Hill Sprint which was won by our self-named Broken Man, now named King of the Hills Nick What a way to celebrate your tenth good deed and return from injury. Bravo, King Nick.

So that's all for another week of Group Run GoodGymness. There's a community mission this Saturday at Nunsmoor Park which you can sign up for here and then we have our first school task next Monday for the group run where we will be doing a spot of painting, so don't wear your best gear for that one!

Have a great week, Anji x

Attendance record smashed Amazing evening alert Record amount of photos uploaded

52 people for the Massive Mash Up at Newcastle University and it was kind of a big deal

I got home and immediately needed a lie down following this, our most massive group run to date and a smashed attendance record for Newcastle. I knew this one would be huge, but THIS huge? This massive mash up was the brains and beauty of GoodGymer Maggie (thank you!) who is Newcastle University Students Union officer for sport as well as a popular member of our group.

It was one of those evenings where people just kept arriving and it was great that it was all caught on camera by Katy and Matt from Sharp Life who were joining us to film a piece on GoodGym Newcastle. A quick welcome, a short warm up and round up of the weekend's achievements including hearing from Emily who was part of GoodGym York's Sean's amazing marathon yesterday. His story is here if you need any more inspiration tonight. It felt brilliant to run right through the city centre in such a huge group with so many people around in Northumberland Street seeing a see of red charging past them! Carol Anne thought we should have had some army-esque chant going as we went and it did cross my mind that having an entire cheerleading squad with us tonight should have meant we were prepared for such activity on the way.

GIVE ME A G! G! GIVE ME AN O! O! and so on...

We were met at the University Students Union building by Maggie and Phil and given a brief intro to the tasks that had been arranged for us which were:

• Clearing the storage space where the NEST group store goodies for the refugee community in Newcastle
• Making Wiggly Bags for and writing letters to poorly children in the RVI
• Painting a blackboard and cleaning out jars for the society that supports the Newcastle Food Bank
• Making bird feeders to hang in the trees around campus

Everyone thought they had the best task tonight but I think the wiggly bag group had the edge in that they had music and sweets, although the NEST group did have toys to play with, the bird feeder people got to take spare feeders home and the food bank group got to get clarty (that's Geordie for messy) so I think everyone was a winner. I heard one of the university students passing through and commenting that we were the "Happiest People Ever" so I think the fun we have doing good things was shining out of us tonight. Our commitment showed as Evan turned up a record 40 minutes late having had the journey from hell (and a pint on the way in the students union) kudos Evan

Such a great mix of tasks and everything was smashed within our task timing of just 45 minutes. All of the society leaders were delighted with the impact we were able to make in such a short space of time. The NEST group were all given thank you letters which was such a lovely touch too, and everyone felt really appreciated.

The university campus was a brilliant space for our fitness session: paired running and short-burst exercises in which everyone got sweaty, out of breath and will probably have epic Tuesday Legs from partaking in. We will definitely use the space again, don't think I didn't see those steps, they'll come in handy!

I've already had some fab feedback from some of you this evening so hopefully everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. We will be back at the University again hopefully a few times before the end of the year so watch this space, it's definitely one not to miss! Hopefully you will be along next week for our visit to a new Changing Lives project and more people doing good and getting fit, just maybe with less sweets. Sign up here for our visit to Gifford House.

Happy running! Anji