It was great to have a crowd of new faces with us tonight - welcome Fiona, Thomasina, Charlotte, Lia and Sarah!

Carb Load

We all know that we should carb load before a serious run, so we started tonight off with a serious game of Hot Potato. Runners were knocked out as we passed the squat jump around the circle, until eventually we crowned Richard as the least coach-y potato of the night.

Mount-pelier

Warmed up, off we set to Montpelier, where Bristol Waste had received three separate reports of litter in the past few days. This involved much more uphill running than many of the group bargained for, but some asked for more and set off on some hill sprints on the way.

When we arrived, the group split into three to cover the areas Bristol Waste had told us about. In actual fact, the streets varied from littered to pretty spotless - had we been beaten to it by an alternative group of do-gooders?! We still gathered in 5 bags of litter, which we left in our designated spot for Bristol Waste to collect.

Something fishy

Not wanting to waste our uphill run to get there, we also spread the word about how older people can get help from GoodGym in the area and did some work for the Yellow Fish scheme. We chalked yellow fish next to the drains in the area to increase awareness of people not putting water pollutants down their local drains to improve wildlife and water quality in local rivers and streams.

After all of this was all complete, we ran back to base, with just enough time to ensure we got to stop for squats, stairs and chair holds along the way!

Can you do the can-can?

Tonight we headed back to practice our can-sorting, weighing and lifting skills while helping East Bristol Food Bank to sort their 200 crates of supermarket donations ahead of the Christmas period. This is always a busy time, both for the donations coming in and the amount of food being processed through the food bank, so it was all hands on deck to get as much sorted as possible.

While Matt conquered his Winter Wonderland walking badge with the accompaniment of Debbie, the rest of split into two groups. Sally led a steadier group while the rest of us went on ahead. When we arrived at East Bristol Food Bank's new premises, Andy explained the sorting process to us and set the first group to work.

We can

Between the group, they manned the scales and weighed each crate to calculate how much had been donated, then split them into grouped items to make them easy to distribute.

Meanwhile, Sally's group arrived and they got the short straw of having to go straight into their fitness session from their run. On the tiny platform of dry ground outside the food bank, the group squeezed together to create a human-Tetris of plank holds, press ups, chair sits and more. After 10 minutes of work, hopefully their thighs, core and arms had enough burn to make them feel virtuous as they switched places with the other group in a food-sorting-and-fitness relay.

(but it would be better with some tin-sel...)

In no time, the group had sorted a large amount of the crates ready for distribution and had exercised GoodGym restraint not cracking into any of the biscuits. We waved Andy goodbye and set off home in the short dry-spell we had. On return, we got treated by Zdeni, who has flown through her good deeds and hit her 50th Good Deed at the weekend. She made the most amazing pernik which I promptly ate most of. Thanks Zdeni!

Welcome to Amanda, Kevin and Jessica who joined us for their first GoodGym Bristol run tonight - it was great to have you! And thanks to Alice for this week's pun!

GoodGym Bristol don't just stop at one task on a stormy Tuesday evening. We don't even stop at two. We managed to squeeze doing three good deeds into one session (and avoided many a mammoth puddle from the earlier downpours as we did so). Welcome to Shannon, Gareth, Eloise and Nikki who joined us tonight for the first time - it was great to have you!

Our first good deed was helping Children's Hospice South West advertise for their Santas On The Run event on 9th December. To do this, 12 willing GoodGymers donned Santa Suits with signs about the run pinned to their backs to spread the word. With almost 50 runners gathering despite the stormy day, some would say it got a little Claustrophobic...

We soon overcame this by getting out, warmed up and set off to our tasks, with Dave being a brilliant backmarker to our mass of red t-shirts and Santa suits. We arrived at Hannah More Primary, where half of the group were going to helping. Ruth from Hannah More Primary introduced the group to the different jobs which they needed help with. The group split into two, with one group doing a litter-pick around the school grounds and the other clearing out the After School Club room. The key to this was not to get Santa-mental and the Santas and GoodGym elves managed this and got stuck in with equal vigour.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group who wanted to stretch their legs further, ran a mile further away where they grouped into small teams to successfully deliver leaflets advertising Santas On The Run and some more of the good causes who we have been working with recently. A couple of Santa sprints later and the group were satisfied with having spread the word in the south of Bristol and were ready to head back.

Our night was topped off by celebrating the very first Santurian... Well done to Alison who did her 100th Good Deed tonight! All with the impressive added extra of doing it in a Santa suit and wearing the famous Centurion outfit with the addition of a white beard. Spectacular.

Q: Why couldn’t the runner get away from the zombie? A: He hit the wall

But there was no wall-hitting tonight, only a bunch of brave GoodGymers, risking missing the Bake Off Final merely by attending and risking losing all feeling in their fingers and toes by weeding on such a cold night, and a bunch of weeds and litter, soon to be no more.

Ghosts v Ghouls

While the Walking Group made a headstart, the night started with an incredible show: as a merely Trainer in a world of other beings, I watched as the Ghosts and Ghouls battled it out in a running-drill-Scare Off. Luckily, it wasn't quite scary enough to scare off Rodwel on his first GoodGym experience - phew and welcome!

Exorcise

On our way to the task, this foolish ghoulishness was continued with zombie walking lunges (special shout out to Clo and Alex who did this with impressive enthusiasm and sound effects) and we soon made it to Newtown to meet Saliha from Up Our Street.

Fangtastic good deeding

The group split into litter-pickers and weeders. With this divide and conquer tactic, we had soon got rid of a whole section of weeds from 30 metres of the roadside in question, while the litter pickers managed to fill several bags per pair with litter (with the top interesting finds going to Caroline and Richard's chair, Clo's glasses and Alex's car keys). Within 30 minutes, the group had created a pile of full bags of litter, garden waste and recycling to be collected by Bristol Waste tomorrow. During this time, Clo and Darren mastered the art of litter-picking swinging (see the photo for evidence) and other members of the group were spotted practicing their zombie moves for tomorrow... All in a hard night's work!

With the temperature dropping further, we started on a speedy keep-warm run home, stopping for a quick game of Halloween corners and covering Darren's favourite Wobbly Bridge Strava Segment along the way. Before long, we were back at base with another Good Deed under our belts and, although we tried, we had not managed to outrun the skele-pun.

You are all unboolievable, and I will leave you with a final, awful Halloween joke to send you on your scary ways...

What do you get when you drop a pumpkin? Squash.

What a perfect way to come back from the sunshine to the dreary, dark nights of a British October than to be welcomed by 43 shining GoodGym faces! Included in those faces were Neil, Fred and Catherine, who joined us for the first time tonight - thank you for joining us, it was great to meet you all. Also a big welcome to Chris, who has just moved to Bristol from Wandsworth GoodGym - welcome on board with the South West!

After some fantastic examples of how not to skip, the group split up to conquer two tasks tonight. The first group (including the impressive 2-day-post-marathon not-even-hobblers) set off towards Hamilton House, a well known community centre in Bristol but our first time helping them.

Hamil-tonne of cleaning products

Maria led half of the group to Hamilton House to do some cleaning of their event space and kitchen. The group did a brilliant job of finding any sneaky dirt lurking in the space - if it was looking good when they started, it is looking amazing now!

Eas-tonne of leaflets

The rest of the group ran to Easton to do leafleting for Felix Road Adventure Playground's upcoming programme of October break events. While Chris and co. took a suspiciously long time to do their section (which passed by several pubs...), the rest of the group conquered tonight's squat challenge and lunge challenge with ease (or, at least, few complaints). The group distributed 300 leaflets in no time and soon our 4 mile leafleting loop was complete.

A celebration involving cake? Who, us?

Once the groups reconvened with perfect timing, we stretched off and settled in to a post-run delayed celebration. Lexi got her 50th Good Deed a couple of weeks' ago and had baked delicious vegan cakes for us all to celebrate with her. Last week, Kait achieved her 100th Good Deed, but got the joy of saving the Centurion outfit for this week. Please see said joy in Kait's face in the photos above... Well done both of you!