Many red t-shirts make light work and 17 is definitely many!

Somehow the walkers beat the runners to the Children's Scrapstore and the ITV news rep beat us all to be waiting for us with the Scrapstore staff.

A bit of stage management and us all pretending we liked talking to each other as we walked to the far end of the warehouse, having stripped off our outer layers to be as on-brand as possible for the camera!

Those who were new to the phone task soon understood the process and methods were developed, adapted, abandoned and just ignored as the production line sped towards filling the two empty crates with newly matched up handsets to desk units, plus all the suspiciously "not phone" hits separated for recycling.

Gone are the days of top executives making important deals on these phones, or calling home that they'd be late AGAIN, instead they're off to children's playgrounds for some make believe games, calling home that they'd be late AGAIN and other storytelling...

Somehow, the kit at the bottom of the crates was even dirtier than the rest but we had time to wash hands before our successful end of task photo by two very full crates of matched phones, some of us having been interviewed and all of us keen to get back to Workout where cake was awaiting us to celebrate Alice's 10th anniversary of joining GoodGym and Tim's 200th good deed. It reminded us just how much we like cake, and friends. And cake.

Well done everyone - we smashed it (well, it sounded like we smashed it)!

January may be a time of New Year's Resolutions but whoever had donated all of their old office phones to the Children's Scrapstore had left a bit of a tangled mess, perfect for GoodGym to sort out!

The simple task of attaching a handset to a desktop unit sounded simple but we soon worked out it was MUCH more satisfying if the handset fitted properly into the desktop unit and made the job much harder for ourselves (as well as detangling the handset wires). We never did find the Berkshire 400 handset but we only finished half of the three huge crates, so maybe there's still hope?

Harsheh was the only GoodGymmer to take up the offer of gloves with the rest of us relying on handwashing at the end if the task - not realising quite how dusty the crates and contents were and Jo and Francesdeclaring aprons a good idea next tine were there.

The runners set off, led by Richard whilst the walkers consolidated the remaining phones to be matched ensuring wed emptied at least one of the crates (and found Mariannea Micro USB charger in the mix.

The Scrapstore staff had enjoyed having us back in the warehouse and we'd improved the 80s song knowledge of some of the younger GoodGymmers with Blondie classics "Hanging on the telephone" and "Call me" before descending into cannibalising phone sets and Fine Young Cannibals renditions. A great time all round.

The Scrapstore needed our help, and 17 GoodGymers answered the call! We welcomed Ryan, Ruben and Kieran to their very first Group Run this evening and we hope they enjoyed their warm welcome this evening.

12 runners ran, 3 walkers walked and Frances and Jade appeared, worked hard, then disappeared back in to the night!

We split in to 3 teams, Ryan, Ruben, Richard G, Richard, Helen, Frances and Nell set about rolling up coloured pre-cut materials, and much debate was had about the relative density, likely uses (pirate hats, capes and yoga mats for people who abhor comfort) before filling barrels and barrels full of them!

Valè and Jason were the cutting crew. Valè proclaiming that one of the sheets reminded her of the smell from baby dolls in Argentina in the 1980's!...unpleasant! The final job was re-attaching handsets to phones. The staff had a little wager on how many we could do, and the team of Phill, Nell, Gareth, Jordan, Freya and Sebastian, surpassed their expectations, reattaching, according to Phil 'a billion!'.

We left the Scrapstore dazzled by multicoloured scrap and hope to be back soon, but also with the promise of indoor winter tasks!

Cara and Kirsty greeted us on this cold February evening and knowing what hardy souls GoodGymmers are, led us to the 'Play Room' as it was 'warmer' than the other rooms! (thank you :-) )

There were 4 tasks already set up. Russ and Sarah K set about cutting out paper shapes (I wasn't paying attention I'm afraid, but Sarah was upset when I said it was time to stop so it must have been fun and it wasn't just because stopping work meant it was that little bit closer for her viva on Thursday! (you're got the Dr Kappel, Horse Whisperer!!!)

Paul and Jason were cutting paper into metre-long strips from big rolls, Caroline and Nicoleta were using a special circle cutter and cut out 'hundreds' of paper circles while Matt and I, Vaguely Northern Darren, beat the world record for removing batteries and wires from 'loads' of old keyboards, before helping Paul and Jason cut more paper strips out because they were going rather slow ...

We all joined in the singing as Cara had put on the radio and it helped the time fly by! (I think everyone else joined in, but I was singing loudly and probably drowned out the others!

Before we knew it, it was time to head back with happy memories, and no (reported) paper cuts which was a pleasant surprise!

Hopefully the Scrapstore will have us back soon as it's a great Tuesday session!

Three Tasks, 56 GoodGymers, 15,000 Good Deeds, 10 years of GoodGym and a 200th Good Deed 😲

What a mammoth session we had ahead of us tonight! It was great to be joined by Maddy for the first time - welcome Maddy! After a game of Shona Says (which everyone is getting far too good at), we split into our three groups to get started on our three tasks and mini-tasks we had ahead of us to celebrate. Not only did each group have to complete their task, they had to try and take a creative photo of 15,000 while they were at it and think of a pun which somehow included 15,000 deeds, ten years and Richard's achievements.

Mel's group did a walk/run session to The Southville Centre to give the paintwork a final push to finish it off just in time for the change of seasons. They are now the proud owners of newly protected wooden features as well as painted bathrooms. Great job team!

Richard B took his group to Easton and St Werburgh's to help The Children's Scrapstore advertise their upcoming Community Reuse Festival on the 28th-29th September. They managed to hand out a whopping 350 leaflets in the local area in just 30 minutes.

Atrenchion please

The rest of the group headed up the hill to help Youth Moves at their allotment. This local charity engages young people from the city in community projects, including their allotment. We joined the young people in digging the ground around the polytunnel ready to build a trench to fix the tunnel and to cut back a very overgrown area. It was all hands on deck to get as much as possible done in our 30 minutes, and we managed to make a big dent in it. Matt also spent a long time being the artistic director behind the 15,000 photo, so please do show it sufficient appreciation.

All's Will that ends Will

Once we had all admired the sunset from our respective parts of Bristol, we reconvened at Queen Square to take on 15,000 squats. I think everyone regretted being quite so good over the past few years at this point! 277 squats each (don't do the maths) and we were all very much ready for a sit-down. Luckily, we were getting to co-ordinate all of this squatting with the brilliant achievement of Richard (Will) Breakspear achieving his 200th Good Deed!! Well done Richard, what an amazing number, the last 100 of which he has done in just 14 months! He is also now the proud owner of a t-shirt with him in the 17th Century on it.

This also produced the wonderful news that there was double cake for everyone to have a good sit down and munch while we read the GoodGym stories and spotted several Bristol names and faces in the book.

What a great night of celebration, which will be continued with Super Saturday!

Thanks to Russ who won tonight's three subjects, one pun competition. I am looking forward to your answer on the other competition of how many prime numbers in 15,000

It was great to have Lucy and Aisha join us for the first time tonight! It was also lovely to welcome Jack back from his French adventure. We got warmed up (not required in this hot sweaty weather) and split into two groups to head to tonight's two tasks: Children's Scrapstore and helping The Churches Conservation Trust.

Derailed

Half of the group headed to St Paul's Church to help Ed from the Churches Conservation Trust to continue painting the railings of the church. This is a job we started helping the charity with at the start of the summer but have not been able to continue due to rain hampering our efforts. Even in this 32 degree day, a spot of rogue rain was due exactly at GoodGym time. We decided that the railings could cope and got to work on painting the pre-sanded area. The group smashed through it in no time at all and then managed to get to work sanding the entire other side of the railings too.

The railings looked good as new, Ed was extremely impressed and crowned the group as The Most Efficient Railing Painters and we only managed to restyle a few people's hair with Summer 19 Green Streaks - success.

Scrappy-Baggy-Doo

Meanwhile, Gary took his crew over to St Werburgh's for a long-awaited reunion with the Children's Scrapstore. Kelly and her team are preparing for a summer fun day next month and needed 200 Goody Bags prepped for it. Challenge accepted. The group created a chain to fill the goody bags with all sorts of scrap, and under Gary's watchful eye found the most efficient rate of 2-3 bags per person at a time (an efficiency rate challenged by Alice who won the record for Most Bags At One Time Per Person with 6 bags, and gaining the nickname of Alice Whaleback for the queue created behind her) and flew through the bags in just 20 minutes. Easy peasy.

With both group's efficiency, there was time for a 'game' of Sally Up Sally Down back in Queen's Square which everyone was delighted with (and will be even more delighted with tomorrow, I'm sure).