WOOHOO GoodGym Bristol Tuesday night Group Runs are back with a bang for 2020!! We don't do things in halves here at Bristol so we brought in the New Year in style with our new record of 70 runners on a single Group Run! This included 14 lovely first timers - welcome to the gang everyone!

To put all these hands to good use we split into three different tasks...

Sofa Away

Group 1: Emmaus

Richard led a running group and Melanie led a walking group to Emmaus to give our monthly helping hands with sorting their donations in their huge warehouse. On this occasion, it included the newly-founded sport of Sofa Smashing - who knew?

Group 2: The Litter-Pickers

Maria and Alice led the chatty groups and I led the returning (still casual) Greyhounds on our 6km run to and from Lawrence Hill. Alice then did a stellar job of co-ordinating a team of litter-pickers to pick up 5 bags of litter in just 25 minutes from the local area. Definitely a task which needed doing, so thank you Alice and litter-picking dream team!

Group 3: The Matthew Tree Project

Meanwhile, the rest of the group split into A and B to do a 50:50 session helping The Matthew Tree Project with sorting their massive load of donations which they had gathered in the run up to Christmas. As the warehouse was packed, the rest of the group were outside doing The Uptown Funk Dance* and sprint relays.

*may not look good on the dancefloor.

The Fresh Face of Bristol

After sorting a mass of Amy from TMTP's donations and puffing a bit more than previously due to our dancing, we headed back to Queen Square and reunited the groups to play a game of When was Keep On Movin' by Five released. It was a nail-biting one, but Tim eventually stole the prize of the correct answer (1999, in case you were wondering).

We then had the chance to celebrate the wonderful Sarah hitting her 50th Good Deed tonight. Well done Sarah!! We look forward to seeing you sporting your black tee soon!

And that was a wrap! (Well, after we found Alex was looking as fresh-faced as a 17-year-old on tonight's run anyway). We will see you all very soon for more January Challenge Madness!

Pun credit to Gary

It was great to welcome Natalie and Tracy to their first Bristol GoodGym run this evening! It was a special night for several reasons. Richard G hit his 5 year Group Run streak. What a hero. To mark the occasion, he had a fetching '5 today' badge which he wore with pride for the rest of the night. Our second celebration of the evening was Emma becoming a Centurion with her 100th Good Deed. Massive well done Emma, we look forward to seeing your wear your wings with pride 😊

Spring forward for a good forking

The group split into two gardening tasks to celebrate the first light Tuesday evening of the year. The first group set off on a longer 8km run to Easton Community Garden. There, they did some speed compost shovelling, sawing, sanding, digging and weeding to make a dent in the pile of work required to start off the warmer months at the garden. We will definitely be back to continue this work before long!

The second group headed over the hill to St Werburgh's City Farm Community Garden. The garden has adults with disabilities there during the week, so the group were set to work with manual tasks around the garden which are too difficult for the group. The tasks were: digging and deweeding a large mound for planting, putting their signs up, weeding a bed for planting, shovelling animal compost (Group 1 weren't the only lucky ones...) and chopping down large amounts of overgrown willow. Sarah was gobsmacked at how much of a difference we were able to make in just 30 minutes with all hands on deck.

After we had got a bit too involved in our willow-lopping, it was time to hot foot it back to base. After this, it was time for our monthly GoodGym Eats, where twenty of us crammed in to Bambalan for delicious food and a delicious Alice-baked cake (again!) to celebrate Emma's 100th. Thank you Clo for organising!

Welcome to Ross and Paul who joined us for the first time tonight - great to have you!

Dazzled by Darrens

After we fed the escaped chickens (don't ask), we split up into two groups for tonight's tasks. Patrick led a group of to Strawberry Lane Allotment. Darren from Strawberry Lane was met by the group and our two Darrens, so they quickly set up a Darren-area (with Paulin becoming a temporary Darren) so they could answer all Darren-queries in unison and self-prescribe themselves as the plural terms of Darrens - a Hunk. What a treat for the Strawberry Lane allotment crew...

A slab in the face

Amid all this Darren-ness, the group were challenged with the task to help move 80 cement slabs across the allotment. After already doing a 5km (uphill) run there, legs were tired but the team were not to be defeated. They worked overtime to get it done and it has now been classed as the most hard-work task in over a year. Well done to everyone who helped with that tonight - we will be returning to Strawberry Lane next month to continue the workout!

Mulch to do?

Meanwhile, we took things at a much more leisurely pace along to Holy Trinity Church to help the Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group. The team split up into four tasks: *Clearing an area and putting down non-slip matting *Bagging all of the leaves and mulch on the pathways *Cutting back an overgrown area to build a future vegetable patch *Leaflet the local area to advertise the gardening group which meets at the church

The team powered through these tasks, then set to work on an additional task of sawing two Christmas trees which had been stranded since December to small pieces to clear the walkway. More importantly, we still had time for the important task of making light work of the juice and biscuits kindly left for us.

We headed on our way back along the harbour with a cheeky stop for a planking Mexican Wave (so much more fun than a regular Mexican Wave...) and got back in time for Alice to do lengths until we perfectly hit a Strava 5k. Great work!

Due to Storm Gareth, we were sadly not able to paint the St Paul's railings this evening with the fear that our painting would end in puddles (or, with the wind blowing right now, that the railings would no longer be there at all).

However, we still had two tasks to help with tonight. Welcome to Ruth, Hannah, Roz and Catherine who joined us tonight! Before getting started, we did a birthday warm up for Alice, based on her number of years for each warm up activity. We then split into two groups...

Chris took a group to Bramble Hill Farm to help with the huge task of tackling the giant compost heap blocking the farm's entrance. Over the next 40 minutes, they shovelled their way through a tonne of compost. I hope you arms aren't feeling it too much tomorrow! Watch this space for further chances to help with the giant compost heap...

The second group split into two to let Gary's speedies speed away into the night. We reconvened at St Werburgh's Community Centre, where we had been left a list of tasks for the group to do. After rummaging through various cupboards and rooms, we gathered equipment and got to work sweeping the outside area where we had helped remove their rubber play area a few weeks' ago, litter-picking and playing the age-old game of How Many GoodGymers Can You Fit In A Toilet * (there was some painting involved too).

On the subject of toilets, Head Office had assigned us the task of creating a number 2 tonight. Jack took on the role of Artistic Director and did a great job of making a small space, no ladder and 30 GoodGymers recreate our placing in the timeframe of GoodGym areas.

After all that, it was time to head back to base and to belatedly celebrate Laura's 50th Good Deed which she got on Friday's Community Mission and Alice's birthday with some delicious baked goods!

*historic evidence of this being an age-old game not confirmed

With the first warm evening of the year (SEVENTEEN DEGREES PEOPLE), the troops gathered for another evening of doing Good. We were joined by a whopping nine first-timers - welcome Andrew, Georgia, David, Simon, Harry, Liam, Dom, Vicky and Emese, it was great to have you!

Tonight we helped with two different tasks...

Surf and Astroturf

Gary took a group out to get all rubbery at St Werburgh's Community Centre. They are laying astroturf this weekend in their play area so the team had the job of bagging up all of the rubber ready for the new surfacing, leaving an even layer to keep it bouncy. This resulted in a very mucky 10 GoodGymers, but very happy at having spent the evening playing.

A-head of the game

Meanwhile, the rest of us went to help with our regular task, Felix Road Adventure Playground. We were greeted by the team and split into tasks. Tonight we were:

• Litter-picking (following a litter-full half-term)
• Cleaning and tidying the art room
• Moving the compost heap and storage
• Fixing the fencing around the wood storage
• Discussing that Richard's favourite fruit is either an olive or a kumquat and wondering which is more strange
• Being scared by Tom's new friend, a decapitated Barbie head

All of the tasks were completed with our classic speed, but the fence was proving a bit more tricky with its technical-requirements. While the fencing team worked on, the rest of us started a partner chair-hold competition. This soon ended with several GoodGymers lying on the floor and some very bemused task-owners.

We headed back through the ever luck-reliant traffic-light maze of Easton for an impressively quick relay with storming sprinting by all of the teams!

What I would like to do in this run report is put 200 variations of puns on Clo's name in to represent each of her 200th Good Deed which she achieved tonight. But then I remembered that my one title pun is questionable enough and that I couldn't subject you all to that. Instead, Clongratulations Clo, you are amazing!

It was great to welcome Johanna on her first GoodGym run tonight - thanks for joining us Johanna! The group split up to help three good causes tonight.

Group 1: The Tea Fairies

Maria led a group of runners to the centre of town to distribute tea, coffee and biscuits to homeless people. As the temperature was getting close to freezing tonight, it was very much appreciated by the recipients. So much so that the team had to go and refresh their stocks of milk and biscuits after just 10 minutes of distributing the hot drinks. Brilliant work team, you will have cheered up many a pair of cold hands tonight.

Group 2: The Puzzling Concrete Smashers

Meanwhile, at Emmaus, Xanne and Robin welcomed us and talked us through the great work of the charity. They then split the group into two. Those who were feeling intellectually charged headed to the warehouse to sort puzzles out, while those who were in need of some anger management or just plain old smashing-things-up* worked on removing the concrete from the front of Emmaus. This is part of our ongoing work to redo the front area of the building to make it a nice place for the community to spend time.

*technical term

Group 3: But what even is a plog?

The final lucky group got what some would describe as the short straw (Darren), while others would say it was the best task of them all (Shona). The group set off on a tour of four local litter spots, where they alternated between a fitness session (did someone say hills?) or litter-picking session. Clo found a new pair of glasses for Darren (photographed), Richard was temporarily misplaced on his hunt for the lost chip-tray and Paul just could not stop running up and down hills. However, we still managed to gather enough litter to stuff full one huge bag of rubbish and one huge bag of recycling for Bristol Waste to collect.

Well done again Clo on your 200 deeds!