A fantastic post-multi-task time was had by all at our new Bristol Saturday home, the Mud Dock café who'd not only reserved us a huge table but also included festive crackers that seemed to contain a surprising number of ginger-beer-swilling scorpions.

And, of course, Richard was presented with a fantastic Garnet-designed 200 t-shirt - true stalwart of Bristol GoodGym.

Happy Christmas, all!

Immense! A new Saturday record of 40 Goodym'ers turned up for our bonus Christmas Eve Eve run today.

Extra special thanks to our Cardiff and Bath friends for coming all the way over to join us today - it was lovely to have so many members of our GG West family over for Christmas. We should definitely meet up more often next year!

The original plan was to help out at the Christmas shelter, but they had been so well served by volunteers during the week that they really only needed a handful of people today. So rather than put all those good deeds to waste we split into 6 groups and spread out around Bristol. (Some of the details and photos may be a little sketchy for now - the group leaders are welcome to add to their sections as they see fit!).

Time fliers pie as Charlie out reaches herself to all points central

Charlie led her group of runners around central Bristol, distributing fliers from the Christmas shelter to anyone sleeping rough on the streets. Each flier was accompanied with the offer of a mince pie, sadly without cream though.

Lisa and Graham pushing the envelope to reach All Hallows Church

Lisa and Graham kindly took on delivery of a bunch of shelter fliers to All Hallows Church in Lawrence Hill meaning that if you were to run the whole perimeter covered by our groups today you would have been taking on a 14 km run around Bristol (see photos)

Dave turns over a new leaflet at Southville

Dave's gang headed out to Southville to place GG mission leaflets at cafes and shops along North Street. The hope is that this will mean lots more elderly people will find out about Goodgym and we can brighten up their January and February by helping out with a bit gardening or simple jobs around the house.

On the way back they gave out a couple of fliers from the homeless shelter

Maria experiences St Peter's Hospice-tality as she helps out at the Broadmead branch

A last minute call to our friends at St Peters Hospice this week meant that we were able to set up yet another task for a group led  by MariatoMtoto help out at their Broadmead branch.

Matterhorn goes native-ity in epic 9K to St Albans church

Of course it had to be our very own ultra-running Matt (check out his new badge) leading the longest run today out to St Albans church in Westbury. This task to set up the Church for Christmas (including a nativity scene) proved very popular, especially when the possibility of some mulled wine was discussed.

Saving Private Room Paul to take a group to the shelter

And finally yours truly took a group out to the shelter itself where a couple of us helped out around the kitchen while the rest of us attempted to re-organise the dormitory and pass a very important message about a potential flood back from the Quakers meeting hall. Thanks to Alex once again for helping out during my more scatterbrain moments.

200 Good Deeds!

Thanks to all my group leaders and photographers. And last but not least, huge congratulations to Richard for hitting 200 good deeds today. He's too modest to make a big thing out of this, but I think everyone at GG Bristol values his kindness and loyalty - and of course enjoyed his fabulous Canal Run earlier this month!

Happy Christmas everyone - this is now genuinely the very last group run before Christmas, see you in the New Year!

There was a certain tension in the air tonight as a high knee-off between lefts and rights looked like it could descend into a rather unsavoury fitness duel. Hopefully the rights will keep their rather boastful comments to themselves next week or it really looks like the lefts could (heel) kick off.

Still, things calmed down eventually and as the dust settled an astounding 33 runners came into view. That's 33 amazing people who are happy to give up their Tuesday evening and run through the cold and dark to help sort the stock at their local food bank. Gert proud of all of you!

Our run tonight took us past the broken Cheesegrater bridge, (closed for six months after a lorry drove onto it!) and out to Big Yellow storage where the East Bristol food bank stores its stock and where we were met by Andy.

After enjoying the challenge of testing the quoted capacity of a 26 person lift, we arrived at floor 3 to find that Andy had been busy. A neat line of crates lay waiting for us all labelled up with the particular food type they should contain - there was even a "Christmas things" crate - how exciting is that! In fact, with our huge turnout tonight we dispatched a small team to lay out a second line of crates, thus doubling our sorting rate.

The sort process is simple, crates containing a random array of items are removed from the store cupboard one at a time, weighed and then their contents are sorted into categories using other empty crates so they can be dispatched to the various food banks around the city for distribution. Ciara manned the scales and did an amazing job of efficiently recording the weights so they could be quickly carried around for sorting.

A steady stream of Goodgym red passed into and out of the store cupboard and I was pleased to observe some excellent crate lifting form after our practice at the warm-up.

By the end of our timeslot we had succeeded in sorting ALL the crates - brilliant work everyone! We said goodbye to Andy (who looked really pleased with our progress) and ran back to base, with my group taking in a few sets of steps along the way.

Thank you to Mel for leading the second group today and Richard and Dave for backmarking. Thanks also to Richard for the pun!

And lastly special mention to Matt for ensuring that every one of his crates was captured on film.

A mathematical warm up tonight with odds, evens, high 5s and even some prime numbers before we all headed off to Emmaus. Splitting into two groups with Charlie helping to lead the second we made short work of the 1.5k distance.

On arrival, Xanne described how Emmaus provides accomodation and training for people who were previously homeless, helping them to get back into work again either in Emmaus' own shops, taking on PAT testing, house clearances or simply going on to find a job outside the community.

We were then given our task for the evening and amazingly Christmas had come early for Bristol Goodgym! We were to get all the Christmas decorations out of storage and sort them either for sale or for use in the shop displays.

Kait quickly saw the potential for a human chain to move the decorations to the ground floor and in no time we had groups sorting tinsel from baubles while sporting various festive garments and in some cases breaking into some Christmas singing!

Several people were tasked with test-assembling Christmas trees to make sure all the parts were there and it was heart-warming to see how these individuals quickly bonded with their trees. See the photos for evidence of this. Does Dave look proud of little Samyule? What about Liam - a little protective of Uncle Firn? And surely Lisa is particularly chuffed with baby Noel!

Another group tackled the largest of the trees, puzzling out all the colour coded branches - while Mel set about testing the Christmas lights to make sure they worked. Another group set to work decorating one of the trees .

By the end we had boxes of decorations ready for sale and trees all ready for display. With a festive group photo in the bag, we headed back to base, squeezing in a few step-ups and squats on the way back to help ensure we can all fit into our Christmas jumpers next month,