It was a Bumper Birthday Night: massive happy birthday to Claire who celebrated with us (and a whole load of chocolate cake) tonight and to Kerry who had her birthday on Sunday. 🎂🎈🎉

It was great to have Stephen join us for the first time - welcome Stephen! And lovely to see Nick back from his 6 month stint in Canada, welcome back to the rain Nick! Alex and Richard also joined us an impressive 3 days after completing the Green Man Ultra - ouch! Great to see you both.

We had two tasks tonight to help with tonight. Maria led a group to Clifton to do leafleting for her orchestra who are doing a fundraising concert for the Bristol Drugs Project. The team did a great job of climbing Park Street, distributing the several hundred leaflets and working on their orchestra impressions/ invisible instrument playing.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang headed to Faithspace where we were met by Suzanne and Marky. Marky set a small group to work with some gardening tasks in the green space opposite the community centre. The rest of the group helped Suzanne by distributing 200 leaflets about upcoming community centre events around the local area, prompting a game of Who Can Find A Letterbox - surprisingly challenging in Redcliffe!

We finished off with some biscuits, juice and a bit of core, then headed back to Queen Square with a stop for arm-circling-relays and finished off with tabata lunges and squats - you might feel them tomorrow.

I don't Claire what you say, there is no such thing as too much cake

After all of that, we headed in for birthday celebrations with not one, not two, but three types of cake. OOFT.

*Pun credit to Darren and obviously not me who it needed explaining to

We avoided today's windy weather and dark clouds and gathered for a Double Leaf Whammy, running to help Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group clearing leaves at Holy Trinity Church and Penny Brohn with leafleting for their Christmas Concert on 6th December.

Penny for your thoughts

Alice D headed off with a group of 9 hardy runners to battle the hills of Clifton to distribute 1 million (or probably 500) leaflets in just 45 minutes around the area. Penny Brohn will be so pleased with this increased advertising. I will give them a head's up about booking out the stadium...

Unbeleafable

Meanwhile, the rest of the group headed to Holy Trinity Church and were split into groups for various jobs. The Leaf Team were armed with brushes, rakes and recycling bags to tackle the mounds of leaves on the pathways and grass. Of course this couldn't be done without throwing and kicking a good load around before getting down to business.

The Loppers got to work clipping back bushes to clear an entrance to.... a telephone box. We marvelled at the idea that people were still using the telephone box, and marvelled further when we realised that we were in fact clearing the window to the box rather than the entrance. Meanwhile, Liam and Dhanesh casually sawed down a tree in approximately 8 minutes, showing their future careers as tree surgeons.

Finally, The Leafleters were kitted out with their maps and their target destinations and split into three teams to distribute as many hundreds of leaflets for Christmas events as they could.

Not mulch left

By 7.30, nothing was leaf-left, including the digestive biscuits. We regrouped and ran back to the Queen Square, stopping for some cheeky sprints and squat jumps along the way.

Thanks to Lexi, Richard, Gary and Jack for tonight's puns

It was wet and windy today but we still had a fab group of hardy GoodGymers join us for tonight's run, including two hardy post-marathoners (well done Darren and Chris!), two post-half marathoners (well done Richard and Jade!) and five new people - welcome Kate, Stephanie, Mark, Noah and Claire!

Once we got warmed up, the walking group set off and the rest of us split into two groups. Patrick led one group to help Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group close-by in Redcliffe. There, the group had two main tasks: clearing the front area of the nursery and delivering some leaflets locally. They donned their head-torches and got to work sweeping, weeding and shifting wheelbarrows to clear up the area, while the rest of the group got creative with working out how to distribute leaflets surrounded by private flats.

The rest of us headed to the Southville Centre where we met Hugh who was optimistic in setting us to work on outdoor painting despite the rain showers. His optimism was deserved as the team worked hard and got the pagoda and the a whole load of the rest of the outdoor wood painted ready for winter. Meanwhile, a mini indoor crew did touch-ups in the toilets which we painted a few months ago and increased the waterproofing behind the sinks.

We'd have loved to stay longer, but we pagoda go

With our paint pots empty, we did a high five chain out of The Southville Centre and ran back to Queen Square with a stop for sprint relays on the way. A quick stretch off and it was time to get warm and dry!

It was great to have Dhanesh and Jordan join us for the first time tonight - we hope to see you back soon! It was also lovely to have Grace, Rahul and Shreyan joining us for the second time tonight following last month's Mind Your Head campaign.

We also got to celebrate Georgina's 50th Good Deed tonight just in time before she heads off to pastures new - well done Georgina!

No rain no gain

The hardcore 30 split into two groups. Sally took a group on a shorter run to Faithspace where they helped Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group deliver leaflets for their Midsummer Fayre this weekend. The run was not as short as advertised as their beautiful synchronised leafleting formation taking them either sides of the river pushed their run to over four miles in all. Nice work!

Thrills and Hills

The rest of the group headed on the hilly (although slightly less hilly than last week) route to Bramble Farm. When we arrived Chris explained a bit about the farm and we got a tour to meet the piglets, goats and load ducks and hens. Once we had torn some of the group away from the Swing Ball, it was time to start leafleting for the area's Get Growing Trail this Saturday which the farm is part of.

Logging a good deed

The group did this in no time so we had the chance to do a hill session in the park on the way home. Impressive sprints all round! With heavy legs we jogged back to Queen's Square where we congratulated Georgina and then celebrated Tim's big birthday early with him and the amazing cake he made!

It was great to have Sophie, Fiona, Lydia, Shrey, Grace, Johanna and Rahul join us for the first time tonight on another busy evening with lots of people joining us as part of Week 2 of the Bristol SU's Mind Your Head campaign.

Before we got going we had a long list of well dones for this active crowd who had been running around the country over the bank holiday and were feeling tired tonight for very different reasons to why I did. Not only that, but we got to celebrate Paul's birthday and 5 Year Group Run Streak!

Art Attack

Then we split into two groups for tonight's good deeds. Alice wonderfully led a group to Southville to do some last minute awareness raising for this weekend's Southville Art Fair on behalf of BS3 Community. It turned into quite the social affair as several GoodGymers bumped into people they knew along the way and from behind the letterboxes! Before long the group had distributed the pile of hundreds of leaflets and made a massive difference for the group ahead of Saturday's event.

Camouflage

The rest of us headed to Holy Trinity church is Hotwells where we were helping Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group with various tasks. The main task for the night was clearing an extremely overgrown area to create an area for a vegetable patch for the local gardening group to use. As this area is often used for anti-social behaviour then this will have a big impact on the local area. The group also did an incredible job of lopping back all the brambles, branches, weeds and nettles sticking over the pathway to the side of the church, deweeding the path itself (including lifting a massive moss jacket which Liam made look like an outfit from last night's Met Gala and was rivalled only by Shreena's weed-dress), refreshing the raised beds for the summer and putting a new raised bed in place (by Team Strong). Not only this, but some of the group also made a crack at delivering some of their 900 leaflets advertising the gardening club and other activities happening in the area.

In 30 minutes all of these tasks had been completed beyond Suzanne from the charity's expectations. We had time for juice and biscuits before hitting the road, with a cheeky plank stop and sprint home to spice things up on the way.

We headed back and then celebrated May's GoodGym Eats with pizza and cider at The Stable - thank you to Danica for organising!

It was great to have Sarah, Karen, Elizabeth, Janine, Beanie, Claire, Genoveva and Zhang join us on their first Group Run tonight, several of whom were joining us as part of the Bristol SU Mind Your Head campaign. Welcome all!

We got warmed up (and I had to warm up my Maths due to Clem's demands) then split into two groups for the night with Liam leading a shorter-run group and the rest of us heading on a 5km loop.

Tool-tal wipeout

Liam's group (with impressive 2-day post marathon backmarking from Matt) headed to Faithspace where we were helping Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group. This was a task planned a couple of months ago which we got distracted from by helping them with an emergency that night instead. By now, our planned gardening was desperately needed! The group set to work with gardening in the small park next to Faithspace, making a big difference to brightening up the local community. Another group were given the task of leafleting about the community happenings to the local houses, which turned into more of a challenge due to the extreme lack of residential houses in the area! They ventured further afield and managed to complete the task in no time.

Don't skip a beat

The rest of us set off to our regular session at Felix Road Adventure Playground. Thank you to Richard B for wonderful backmarking on our journey along the cycle path with chair, squat and sprint fitness stops and a cheer team of a several groups of local children on wheels. We soon arrived and were met by the usual overjoyed welcome from the team. The group were split into two: a skip team and gardening team.

Team Skip got to work with with smashing and bashing (technical term) to fit all the items into the skip. I must say, I have never seen such a neatly packed skip in all my life, neither have I witnessed someone saw a wheely bin in half (nice work Russ) or get quite so into hammering things to pieces (slightly worrying, really...) Team Gardening had the massive task of tackling all the nettles, brambles and sticky willy (I promise it's an innocent thing) to clear the land for planting and make it safe for the children to play.

In half an hour the team smashed through the tasks and once again left a very pleased Felix Road team with 6 bags of garden waste bagged, 2 bags of litter picked and a full skip waiting to be collected.

Tool-y, skip-y, sticky missions complete!