GoodGym comin' atcha on a Tuesday evening!

It's here.... Tuesday... finally! GoodGym day. You know, I firmly believe that in 1000s of years time GoodGym Cardiff will still be running (Excuse the pun) and that great legends and stories of GoodGym Cardiff will be told to the masses.

Anyway, let's get on with reporting on tonight's run.

Who turned up!?

This week Nathan Swain made an appearance on the Tuesday run! Nathan gets involved in community missions and missions to help older people however doesn't often make it to the Tuesday group runs as he leads a youth club on the same evening. He also hung around after for the tweet off to make sure there wasn't any cheating going on... Nathan takes the tweet off very seriously. Who else? We also had Rachel, Alice and Marion all come along - They haven't been to a Tuesday group run for a while so it was so nice to have them join in - Wish we could see you all every week :)

Lets get warm!

To make sure our muscles were warmed up enough ready for the run ahead, we did warm up exercises that got the blood flowing. Our warm up involved bouncing on our tip toes, lunges, high knees and butt kicks!

Let's get our run on!

Adam led runners to Bute park whilst Martin, Su and Rosie all backmarked ( The 3 musketeers making sure that nobody got left behind). Ben led the walking talking group.

The fitness circuit bonanza

At Bute park we all stopped to do some fun fitness exercises. First, Ben told everyone to run and find themselves a leaf, which they did - Some runners got very attached to their leaf. Ben then asked everyone to line up with their leaf, to sprint for 10 seconds and then place their leaf where they stopped. They then had to repeat the run and reach the point where they put their leaf onto the floor - Some people couldn't beleaf they found their leaf again... they were definitely releaved.

Then it was time for some fun circuits. Runners ran to station 1; there they had to do star jumps for 30 seconds, then they had to squat jump to station 2; there they had to do squats for 30 seconds, then they ran to station 3 where they had to do press-ups for 30 seconds.

The fitness circuit bonanza ended with a wheelbarrow race - OH YESSSS!

Welcome to the Samye Foundation

The mindfulness and wellbeing centre always love having us visit! Lorraine gave us very much needed water when we arrived so we could rehydrate.

The tasks for tonight included:

• Putting up bird boxes
• Planting cauliflower plants
• Weeding the garden areas, laying fresh soil and sprinkling seeds for the bees and butterflies

25 Minutes of hard work got the jobs done. Lorraine was impressed with what was achieved, thanking us and offering us tasty nibbles to make sure we were properly fueled for our run back to Big Moose.

Time to run back

Ben led the walkers back and not long after Mikey followed with the rest of the pack.

Well done everyone on tonight's run - You all looked great, ran well and I look forward to doing it all again next week when we help St Alban's Primary School. Click here to get signed up so you don't miss out

Tweet off!

Well done Lucy on winning the tweet off this evening!

Here's the updated league table. Lucy is smashing it this year. But there's another 33 points (approx) up for grabs until the Christmas party award ceremony

• LM 5
• EW 2
• MG 2
• DRN 1
• BA 1
• NS 1
• NI 1
• AG 1
• WD 1

It’s Tuesday I hear you say? Yes, that’s right! It’s Tuesday and that can only mean one thing… It’s GoodGym day.

A great turnout at GoodGym Cardiff tonight with a whopping 24 runners making an appearance – You are amazing! We started our run with a headcount and by shouting out our favourite fruit. There were plenty of kiwi, banana and mango lovers amongst us... and now the whole of queen street know! Does anyone know why the banana went to the doctors? It wasn’t peeling well – I know, I know, comedy gold – You’ll find me at Glee Club sometime in the future. Feeling warm, ripe (nice inserted reference to fruit) and ready, we had no more time to waste.

This evening we banana split ourselves into two groups to run to the task; Darren, who did his hair especially for this evening’s run was, of course, leading the sexy runners. Ben led the speedy runners. The sexy runners, flaunting their running legs, took a direct route to the task whilst the speedy runners, not flaunting their legs as much, stopped to do press-ups, star jumps and squat jumps – Martin said he was tired so this was the plan to wake him up! He claimed it didn't work but we didn't see another yawn out of him!

Welcome to the YMCA you amazing GoodGym lot

Tony invited us into the store and greeted us with a warm welcome. There was no messing around with Tony and he was quick to let us know what our task would be that evening. He said we had to put small cubes that corresponded with the size of the clothes onto the correct hangers…. “No problem” we all said and quickly everyone got stuck straight in... Weeeeeee.

Lowri caught sign of the card game ‘Stare’. She took the name of the game quite literally and was captivated by it, staring at the box for what must have been 10 minutes. Darren began riding on a child’s rocking horse… living the dream. Matt from Let’s Make Good Happen had his picture taken with a teenage mutant ninja turtle - New profile photo? Mike was back for his second run with GoodGym and he appeared to love this week’s task, really relishing in the opportunity to do good! Both Molly and Katy tried out the sofa, their verdict was that it was so comfortable that they struggled to get up from it... Unfortunately for the sofa has already been sold. There is also a photo of Owen with a new friend he met at the YMCA and Lewis with Peppa pig!

After 30 minutes of helping out Tony was pleased with everyone’s efforts. He said “you’ve done exactly what we wanted and it’s great all the clothes now have sizing cubes on their hangers”. Tony then invited us to stay an extra 5 minutes to have mince pies and a group photo before we headed back.... Oh go on then, if you insist ;) Aware that it isn’t long until Christmas and that it is unlikely we will be visiting the YMCA before then, we all said Nadolig Llawen to Tony when we left and thanked him for giving us an AWESOME reason to run.

The time has come to run back

We began the run back to town as one group and then split into smaller sub groups, regrouping at the Big Moose Café at the end of the run. Whilst doing our warm down exercises we reflected on evening's run which we all agreed was absolutely great fun! A successful #GivingTuesday run if I do say so myself!

Unsure about getting involved? Just come along :) Everyone is friendly and we make sure nobody gets left behind!!

Don’t forget folks…

• Sign up to get involved in putting up the Christmas decorations at Herbert Thompson Primary School on Thursday 29th December by clicking here
• Help set up the Grangetown Christmas market on Saturday 1st December by clicking here
• Celebrate Christmas with residents of the Vale who rarely able to get involved in events in their community. This is taking place on the Monday 1st December. Click here to get signed up
• Don’t forget to join in next week’s group run by clicking here. We will be running to help out our friends at the Forget-Me-Not charity again.

So in summary, there is lots of stuff going on that you can get involved with!

23 runners attended GoodGym this evening with an appetite to get fit and do good!

As the clock turned 6pm runners began entering big moose café thick and fast. Everyone was raring for 6.30pm for the start of the run, and when the clocks eventually hit that time Ben led everyone outside for the warm up and to do the briefing.

There were some new and for a long time not seen faces at GoodGym this week. A HUGE, GIGANTIC welcome to Sophie and Dom! Katy brought Sophie along to GoodGym this evening so that means she earned herself 1 BRAND NEW RED LACE! #LifesGoals

The warm up consisted of everyone running around in a circle whilst Ben led everyone through a rather bizarre warm up. Ben shouted out the names of people ‘Miss High Knees’, ‘Mr Butt Kick’, ‘Mr Jump’, ‘Mrs Lunge’ and ‘Dr Jump’ and each time he called out their names they had to do the fitness exercise that corresponded… needless to say it was weird, but great fun!

What!? Is it really Two Task Tuesday!!?

Ben then explained that this week there were two different tasks. Task 1.) You will be running to the Tenovus Charity Shop on Clifton Street. Task 2.) You will be running to Grangetown Pavilion to declutter the AstroTurf of all the leaves…. Choose wisely!

Helping out at Grangetown Pavilion

Ben led the group of runners helping out at Grangetown Pavilion; the group included Ben, Lucy, Martin, Marion, Adam, Darren, Lydia, Andrew, Nic and Peter. The run to the Pavilion was adventurous, we did step ups on benches on St. Marys Street and squatted outside the Millennium Stadium.

After about 1.7 miles of running we had arrived to Grangetown Pavilion. Our arrival was celebrated, maybe next time though we don’t need fireworks… Ali welcomed us all to Grangetown Pavilion. He told us about how the leaves collected on the Astro pitch has been a nuisance and made it difficult to use the pitch safely (as it becomes really easy to slip when there are leaves on it). This was what Ali needed our help with – Our mission was to collect all of the leaves and put them into green bags. Ali provided the green bags and the gloves were taken from Bens backpack. … We weren’t left to do this alone, though. There were groups of teenagers and fathers and sons playing on the football pitch and they joined in too. Approximately 18 of us all worked together to clear leaves from the Astro turf and after about 20 minutes the task was complete.

Well done to everyone for doing so well! I’d also like to extend a special thanks to all of the teenagers, fathers and sons who were using the Pavilion facilities at the time and who joined in with making a positive difference.

Helping out at the Tenovus Charity Shop

13 of us ran to Tenovus, a short run in the darkened cold months, but not to be stopped extra time was added on with the wonders of step ups. Also the shouts of ‘we should have gone on Ben’s run’, but after a couple of minutes we were off again. Introducing Dom to the lovely night Cardiff we ran around the prison that the City has grown around. It wasn’t too long until we arrived at our destination, the Tenovus charity shop, with a mixture of tasks to come. Carl opened the doors with a welcoming smile and introduced us to the shop, tonight we had old clothes to de-hang so that we could re-purpose the hangers and hang NEW clothes, but first they were to be steamed and then put out on shop floor. More to do, a seasonal display in the window – OOOOoooh Christmas Jumpers, rearranging DVDs, in age classification and then alphabetical order, now there is dedication.

We had a dancing Xmas toy, sparkling shoes, soooooooo many Christmas jumpers, an inappropriate dinasour, bikers outfit and a weird head in a cloche. Oh it was so much fun, but we did it, we made the store ready for the season and so much more.

But wait, why was there a cat blanket left, should this not have gone home with Dom. Just to confirm, that’s a blanket with cat’s on it, not a blanket made of cats.

And so to the philosophical question of the century, with the Gingerbread Man the Jesus of cookies……. Does the baking of the Gingerbread man create the life of the cookie man, or ……… does it kill him?

Answers to the dark question below please!

All from the dark dead gingerbread man Xmas jumper that was found in the shop, the poor guy snapped in two.

Happy Seasonal Greetings!

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Well done to Darren and Ben who together came up with the Pun for the Run! - You guys get to have half of the RunPunStiltSkin award each!