There was no drought about it, even though tonight's run numbers were slightly dampened by, well, the damp, we still made up quite a cloud. 50 GoodGymers turned up to hold on to our second place rain in the January challenge and we got lots of new hardy people join us for their first session too - welcome to Nicola, Liz, Natalie, Liana and Sasha!

There was no raining on our parade: we got warmed up with a complicated maths warm up, and then headed on our short run to St Thomas's Church to help the Churches Conservation Trust while Alice led a group on a longer 7km round trip run to help the British Heart Foundation with donation sorting.

Once the donation sorters got all the way up Gloucester Road they were separated into different groups for donation sorting. It required some imagination at first to work out the methods but they soon got into the swing of it, making a dent in the huge pile of donations which need to be sorted before another 100 bags arrive later in the week, and finding a body-less teddy bear along the way - spooky...

Once the church scrubbers had made their way through three exercise stations on the short run there, we were met by Ed and split into groups for removing wax from all of the church floors and dusting, sweeping and hoovering the rest of the church. Ed had the tunes pumping and before long the church looked much better, a few cups of tea had been drunk and it was time for a detour route back ft. hills, stair climbs and LOTS of rain. Eventually we headed back to gain shelter and to celebrate Art getting his 50th Good Deed tonight and Lexi's delayed centurion celebrations for her 100th Good Deed on Saturday! MASSIVE well done to you both!

We headed to Bambalan for our first GoodGym Eats of the year, where we realised it had been abreeze. Although there did continue to be a chance of (warm, hot) showers for 50 sodden GoodGymers.

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).

It was a big old night at GoodGym Bristol with...

Fifty-nine runners Twelve new GoodGymers and Three tasks

Phwoar. Welcome to everyone who was running with us for the first time tonight - it was great to meet you all. And a big well done to Roz who completed her 50th Good Deed tonight and will be sporting her black t-shirt soon!

Our massive group got to work on three different tasks tonight...

Task 1: The planters

Maria led a select group of 6 runners to The Station where Alice D set them to work painting the planters a beautiful green to continue the spruce up of the area. We gave the benches at The Station their first lick of paint a month ago and so it was great to be able to help Alice and the team with continuing the paint job to prep for the summer.

Task 2: Setting the tone

Meanwhile, Alice W took a group to Emmaus, the homeless charity. Due to an Open Warehouse event they are having at the start of June and some very efficient volunteers over the past few days, our planned warehouse sorting was changed to leafleting for the warehouse open day. Matt was in his element with changing toners and guillotines, the rest of the group got through distributing hundreds of leaflets, and Alice managed to innocently ask two members of the group...

So are you two screwing then?

(Nails, we think).

Task 3: De-railing the night

The rest of us went to St Paul's Church to meet Ed from the Churches Conservation Trust. Our task here had been cancelled last month due to rain so we were delighted to have a positively balmy day to get to work this time. After Ed explained a bit about the trust and the importance of Circomedia, we started sanding and repainting the railings at the front of the church. The massive team sanded almost the whole front of the church and gave one of the gates and its surrounding panelling a fresh lick of (you guessed it) green paint. Before long, time was up and we ran on our way promising Ed we would come back to finish off soon.

Eating Peters

After reconvening back at base, we had a quick game of Squat Tig to finish off the night and then debated (if 1 v. everyone else counts as a debate) the pronunciation of Pitta until it was time to say goodnight.

CREDIT TO ALICE D FOR THE PUN!

Welcome back to Tuesday night Group Runs! 2019 is already shaping up to be a big one... we got GoodGym's biggest numbers ever tonight - well done Bristol and your endless enthusiasm!

We were joined by 11 people new to GoodGym Bristol tonight - it was great having you Jayne, Jenny, Josie, Lee, Paul, Natasha, Jess, Amanda, Josephine, Louise and Saskia! Not only did we have lots of new GoodGymers and a new highest attendance to celebrate, it was also Tim's 50th Good Deed AND Alex's 100th Good Deed - well done!!

After we warmed up, we waved goodbye to the walking group then split into three running groups to get to the task. Thanks to Jack, Sally, Mel and Clo for your leading and back-marking to get the groups to the surprisingly-hidden task location... We arrived at St Thomas Church in Bristol and met Ed from the Churches Conservation Trust. Ed explained to us the importance of the church, which is no longer in use but dates back to the 17th Century, and of the work of the charity, which looks after non-used churches all across the country. Ed had organised a stack of jobs for us to do and we quickly split into different groups.

Group 1 - Waxing Lyrical

The first group were set the task of reviving the beautiful old tiles by scraping off all of the dripped candle-wax from the floor. This had to be done carefully to protect the tiles, so the group worked with their special wooden scrapers to get it all off and made a MASSIVE difference to the floor.

Group 2 - Working their Pew-ny Muscles

Group Two were set to work cleaning the two entrance hallways of the church. They swept, mopped, dusted and cleaned doors to make each entrance so much more inviting to passing visitors.

Group 3 - Aisle be Dusting

The third group conquered the aisles and pews of the church with their dustclothes and brushes. They then bagged all of the dirt and mopped down the entire church, what a job!

After half an hour, the group had given the entire church a thorough clean, and we regrouped and ran back just in time for some fiercely competitive relays.

It was then time for the first GoodGym Eats of the year, where 20 of us trooped to Three Brothers to eat burgers (Andy may or may not have eaten all of the burgers photographed) and for Alex to bemuse all of the other diners by looking very casual in a centurion outfit while going about her meal. As if the burgers weren't enough, we then had Alex's AMAZING lemon cake for pudding, setting high standards for the next Centurion!