Bed up? Well, let me tell you a story ...

One damp night in November, a massive number of Goodgymmers assembled for a brilliant task at the brand new Bristol YMCA (thanks Emma for sending me this one!)

After a highly unconventional follow-my-leader warm-up around Queen Square the group headed off on a short run to the old Police station where the hostel was to be situated. The hostel is to combine both conventional accommodation and a number of beds for young people who have become homeless with one providing financial support for the other.

The builders were due to finish in a week or so all that remained was to move a trifling 99 flat packed bunk beds from the ground floor into the various dormitories ready to be assembled. After a quick intro from our host Ben, mattresses and bed frames quickly starting disappearing from their respective piles as an eager army of red GG worker ants busily ferried them up two floors and distributed them amongst the rooms.

This was fairly physical work as the frames were pretty heavy so it was all the more impressive to have completely cleared the ground floor area after 40 minutes on the task.

Of course, now all that remains is the the trifling matter of assembling 99 beds -so do join us on Saturday for part two if you can!

Goodgym York - challenge accepted

Having bumped into GG York trainer Egg over the weekend and been filmed taking part in the November press-up challenge I was keen for the rest of GG Bristol to show GG York what they were made of. And even after carting all those beds around, I am proud to say that everyone still had some energy to complete the 14 press ups that were due today! Top work everyone!!

Mel - GG Bristol Centurion

And finally, congratulations to Mel for reaching 100 good deeds today. This was celebrated in some style with a GG Bristol arch through which she duly ran - along with Clo who was celebrating 3rd placed female in the 10k last weekend ... and a few other random people who happened to be walking through Queen Square

Mel then duly donned the GG Centurion outfit and happily had brought plenty of cake to celebrate!

A fantastic 35 runners met at Vivo tonight for the short run over to the Bearpit to help out our good friends at Incredible Edible; represented tonight by the amazing Hannah. Incredible Edible reclaim patches of urban wilderness to grow edible crops that are then available to anyone passing through. Working together with the wonderful businesses that make-up Bearpit CIC, this once neglected (and somewhat notorious) space has been transformed into a much greener and safer environment that encourages mixed use by the whole community.

As it turns out, Hannah had been a little held up so the only option was of course to run split relays alternating step ups and lunges with circuits round the edge until she arrived. We then split into two teams with Liam once again stepping up to lead a sortie to a secondary IE site at Spring Hill so that the remaining (inedible) Snowberries could be uprooted to make way for edible alternatives. With few cutting tools available, this was a very physical task and while the team worked Incredibly-edibly hard and many brave snowberries perished, some still remained (although in the interests of the title pun - thanks Alice - this is to be regarded as fake news and ignored for the remainder of this report). Well done Snowberry team!

The remainder of us tackled the Bearpit itself, using an assortment of lighting options to distinguish food from weed-ville. Special mention to Alex (good deeds = 99), Mel and Julia for their horticultural skills in this endeavour.

Finally, when the special snow-beret troops returned we decided to call it a day and thanking Hannah dashed off back to Queen Square for some stretches and a well-earned - if long-awaited - pizza.

Welcome to Sally, Kimberley and Saskia for joining us on their first GG Bristol group run tonight!

In other news it is nice to see the Bring-a-Friend tradition continuing. Anna received her red laces tonight for bringing Hollie for the last two weeks, and Julia actually qualified for a second pair. Abigail - I still have yours for bringing Sophie, sorry I couldn't find them amidst all the gloves and lights in my bag tonight!

Thanks very much to Charlie for leading the second group (and carrying backpack #2) tonight and Alice and Jack for back-marking (and group photos). Congratulations also to Mel, Jack and Charlie for becoming qualified GG run leaders!

Refreshed from a bank holiday a massive group of ravishing runners met at Vivo to help tidy up Spring Hill with Incredible Edible and the yard at Emmaus.

20 runners came with me (Gary) to Emmaus. We ran around a mile to get there before being greeted by the ever smiling Xanne. She gave us an introduction and explained that our task would be a little different from the usual. Today we were to sort through all of the donated items that were put into the yard as they were deemed trashier than a romantic airport novel cover being read aloud by Oscar the Grouch. We were put to work smashing furniture, tearing fabric from mattresses, smashing electrical equipment to separate the plastic and metal parts and tool sorting.

New runners Roanna and Guido worked alongside veteran and recent conqueror of the Matahorn Ultra Madahorn Matt to sort a plethora of tools. While the electronics team had a smashing time a really swept the floor with their dance routines. But biggest shout goes out to the team taking on the task of removing the fabric from a mattress that had every spring individually wrapped. Needless to say they did not quite have enough time but we will be back to finish the job.

After finishing up and leaving Xanne happy with our work we ran back to Queen Square for a game of Chicken Otter Badger before stretching out.

On root to snow berry who's boss

The remaining 10 runners joined Hannah of Incredible Edible to mercilessly destroy the (superficially appealing) snowberries that were taking up valuable edible space that could be used for planting tasty food.

The 10 surely did the work of 20 and after haf an hour snowberry remains littered the path. Special kudos to Sophie who managed to break off one of the prongs on her fork in her enthusiasm and to the Godfather who totally laid waste to a particularly tough snowberry root.

Farewell from Goodgym Bristol to Louis who is heading home after finishing his job in Bristol. Hope to see you on the Birmingham run report soon, Louis!

Thanks for a great evening guys. It was hot and humid but you smashed it putting the jobs to bed no problem a-tool. Snow runder our task hosts reallly dig what we do and root for us all the way!

See you next time!

On a splendid summer evening over 30 smiling runners met to run to Bedminster to help the Patchwork Project to fix up some street gardens that were in weed of some attention.

The patchwork project are led by the ever welcoming Laura and Liz who met us after our 1 mile run from Vivo. They have several areas of ground in the area that they tend to planting bulbs and plants to make the street beautiful. Recently the beds on Stackpool Lane had been damaged really badly by what appeared to be a drunk gorilla wielding a strimmer while pretending it was a mic stand and performing a tribute to Freddy Mercury in full flow of rendition of I want to break free. So the task was simple. Stop, snip, chop, weed, and tidy the beds.

Runners new and regular set to work quickly choosing a patch of land to give their attention to and set to work. Alex and Neil took down some pretty big flora scalps while a couple of new runners set about planting bulbs in a patch that had been decimated by some recent waterworks. Not the crying kind hopefully, more the pipes and taps kind of palaver.

Soon it became apparent that due to our fantastic turn out we would have the job done well within time. This gave me the opportunity to take some energetic souls out for a trip around the harbour while the rest stayed on to finish the final few jobs. My gallant bunch performed sprint after sprint focusing on their form by staring at scaffolding. Hats off to you all for accepting the challenge every time I yelled "See that lampost? Sprint to it!". You were brilliant.

We all met back in Queen Square for a cool down and a stretch to round off what was a really fun evening. Shouts out to David for gaining his 50th deed on Saturday and therefore his coveted black GoodGym t-shirt, and to Alice (the) Whale for becoming our 15th centurion by completing her 100th good deed on her birthday no less! Well done Whale, we're so lucky to have you and your massive hair in our group, you fricking rock!

That left nothing more to do then to go and get some pizza and cider to celebrate so we all lived apply ever after...

Until next time,

Gary