It was another mega edition of new runners at GoodGym Bristol tonight - it was great to have Vicki, Maria, Tom, Rosie, Sophie and David join us for the first time, as well as some of the Team GB GoodGym event runners come and join us for a regular session.

To match this huge number we also had three tasks to complete tonight. We got warmed up with a game of the playground-classic, Toilet Tig, then split into three groups, with Maria and Mel run and walk leading - thank you both!

Toilet humour

The warm-up was fitting to get Mel's group ready for their task, as they were heading on a walk/run group back to the Southville Centre. After we had given their toilets a first lick of paint last week, our crafty walkers and runners got to work putting all hands on deck to give it a second coat. Even though some people were said to be loos-ing the plot (thanks Mel), the bathrooms were soon looking glossier in their sleek gray (the latest colour trend, of course).

Loos-ing the Plot

Meanwhile, Maria led a group of 10 on a longer 9km run to help the Matthew Tree Project at their gardening allotment plot. The group took the hill up there in their stride and arrived ready to tackle the work to be done. Rosa set the team to their tasks of composting, weeding and picking tomatoes. Not only did they get to use wheelbarrows, they also got a great view of Bristol as dusk fell!

Crate burpees

The rest of the group headed off to Easton to help East Bristol Foodbank. They have just had their recent delivery of supermarket collection donations and we were doing our regular task of sorting them into different categories so they can be easily distributed to people in need. Andy from the food bank said that our half an hour session with them had saved their regular volunteers 3-4 hours of work! Wow.

As we were such a big group, we split into two groups, with half working and half doing The Centurion Burpee Challenge at any one time. This was created specially for this evening's centurion, Alice, but she had managed to sneak off into the toilet crew so everyone had to do her burpees for her. The two groups smashed it, with the winning teams making it to the top of Victorious Hill in 5 minutes and 4 minutes respectively.

After all of this, we headed back to Queen Square to reunite the groups and to crown Alice with her celebratory Centurion outfit and the latest addition of the UniHorn, which centurions now have to ride around the circle, while galloping, holding their shield and high-fiving all the rest of the GoodGymers. Some say it is harder than doing all of the 100 deeds put together. Massive well done Alice - you are amazing!

To prove her amazingness to us all even more, Alice had baked DELICIOUS celebratory scones which she militantly guarded until people proved that they were eating them the Cornish way. Stay true to your routes, girl.

Pun credit to Matt and Mel, who are way funnier than me

It was great to have so many people join us for the first time tonight: welcome to Jenny, Oliver, Mitch, Richard, Jo and Isabel! We got warmed up, marvelled at the fact that 11% of the runners here tonight were called Richard, then split up into our respective groups.

Mel led a walk and chat litter-picking group on a couple of kilometre tour around the local area. It was a well-planned route as, even though right in the centre of town, the group found loads of rubbish and hauled a load of bags to a pick-up point for Bristol Waste. Despite being busy litter-bees, they still had time to take some power stance litter-picking photos. All in a night's work!

The Black Arrows

Meanwhile, the rest of us set off towards St Werburghs, led by our very own acrobatic running crew, The Black Arrows, who stunned us with performances of running in squares, arrows and straight lines. The talent really never ends here at GoodGym Bristol. We soon arrived at our two neighbouring tasks for the evening, St Werburgh's City Farm Community Garden and Narroways. The charities had even had a chinwag before we arrived to work out how many of us each of them needed!

The Tree Musketeers

Seven GoodGymers headed off with Chris from Narroways to the nature reserve to do some cutting back of the overgrown areas. This involved lots of bramble cutting, hacking at long grass and weeds (which Richard got scarily into), cutting back overgrown trees and bushes and trying to remove ash saplings. Chris offered a prize for anyone who could do this (I embarrassed myself having a go and not moving it in the slightest) - top tip, remove your saplings when they are tiny!

Meanwhile the rest of the group were split into seven teams in the Community Gardens. Half of the teams were allocated an area of the gardens to tackle the bindweed which has spread across the whole area during the hot summer. The other teams were set to work to remove a tree which had fallen onto the path, stopping it from being accessible and doing compost heap runs. Liam had a blissful half hour peacefully watering the vegetables and Chris and Richard got the hard job with turning compost at the farm.

Living on barrow-ed time

The time went too quickly and we had to drag people away from their bindweed to run home. The team from the gardens were really pleased what our 'team of locusts' had got done, and we wished them farewell for the last of our light evenings at the gardens this year.

We headed back and did a lunge stop. After 5 minutes and legs beginning to burn, we got the group back together and headed back to Queen Square for a much-needed stretch off.