A couple of weeks of loitering round cycle shop parking lots felt wholly worthwhile tonight as the accumulated boxes were once again turned into ingenious beds for the homeless by the massive throng of Goodgym runners who met together in Bristol tonight.

Almost 40 of us (welcome to our first timers Kara, Kathleen and Emma) ran up to our usual workshop location at the United Reformed Church on West Street to meet Elliot the card bed designer. Elliot quickly ran through the essentials of card bed construction - fold before you cut, orientate the templates correctly with the 'grain' of the cardboard for maximum strength .. and don't make too many C's (the template sections are all labeled with a letter and while only one C is required for a bed, we seem to have completed 10 of them in our last workshop!)

The beds are designed to fold flat so they can be easily carried around and stored during the day. At night they slot together to form a strong rigid structure that allows a homeless person to sleep raised above a concrete pavement and both maintain body warmth and benefit from a somewhat softer surface.

We got to quickly down to work, but there were just too many of us to all work on the cutting and folding at the same time so we split into two groups, with one group litter picking around the church while the other assembled beds. Half way through we swapped and managed to also complete some weeding around the church car park. Its great that we were able to help out our hosts in this way as they regularly give us the use of the church free of charge - including turning the heating on for us before we arrive!

As we neared the end of our time in the hall, Elliot assembled a bed for us from the parts we had made. And as is now traditional, we tried it out for size!

After a very busy last few minutes packing the beds and used cardboard away in the car, we ran back to base and celebrated our latest milestone achievements. Liam has reached 50 good deeds and is now the proud owner of a black T shirt, while Matt'erhorn has reached 200 and receives his own personalised shirt as is the custom here in Bristol.

Sarah, our new 100 deeder from Saturday kindly bought vegan cakes and Matt brought pink wafers, so pretty much a perfect evening from my point of view!

There was a certain tension in the air tonight as a high knee-off between lefts and rights looked like it could descend into a rather unsavoury fitness duel. Hopefully the rights will keep their rather boastful comments to themselves next week or it really looks like the lefts could (heel) kick off.

Still, things calmed down eventually and as the dust settled an astounding 33 runners came into view. That's 33 amazing people who are happy to give up their Tuesday evening and run through the cold and dark to help sort the stock at their local food bank. Gert proud of all of you!

Our run tonight took us past the broken Cheesegrater bridge, (closed for six months after a lorry drove onto it!) and out to Big Yellow storage where the East Bristol food bank stores its stock and where we were met by Andy.

After enjoying the challenge of testing the quoted capacity of a 26 person lift, we arrived at floor 3 to find that Andy had been busy. A neat line of crates lay waiting for us all labelled up with the particular food type they should contain - there was even a "Christmas things" crate - how exciting is that! In fact, with our huge turnout tonight we dispatched a small team to lay out a second line of crates, thus doubling our sorting rate.

The sort process is simple, crates containing a random array of items are removed from the store cupboard one at a time, weighed and then their contents are sorted into categories using other empty crates so they can be dispatched to the various food banks around the city for distribution. Ciara manned the scales and did an amazing job of efficiently recording the weights so they could be quickly carried around for sorting.

A steady stream of Goodgym red passed into and out of the store cupboard and I was pleased to observe some excellent crate lifting form after our practice at the warm-up.

By the end of our timeslot we had succeeded in sorting ALL the crates - brilliant work everyone! We said goodbye to Andy (who looked really pleased with our progress) and ran back to base, with my group taking in a few sets of steps along the way.

Thank you to Mel for leading the second group today and Richard and Dave for backmarking. Thanks also to Richard for the pun!

And lastly special mention to Matt for ensuring that every one of his crates was captured on film.

It never rains at Goodgym. (Well apart from that one time with the HelpfulPeeps leaflets, oh and that Stackpool road job with the Patchwork project ..)

It almost never rains at Goodgym.

And tonight was no exception. After raining continuously all day, it stopped for us tonight

So after welcoming our new recruits (fantastic to meet you!) we split into two groups and headed off to St Paul's Adventure playground. Guy and Rachel of the APE project are doing an amazing job of making this brilliant playground shine again - and had enlisted our help.

Rachel had promised there would be lots to do for all 30 of us - and she was true to her word!

Team one were set to work raking up leaves in the ball court.

Team two had to scrub the main gate with wire brushes, sand paper and sugar soap to prepare them for painting (they'll look brilliant when they're done!)

Team three were tasked with moving the contents of the downstairs room into the mezzanine above for storage. Unfortunately the hoist is broken so it would have taken Rachel a long time to carry each item up the ladder!

After 30 minutes ...

Team one had not only swept the ball court, they had gone rogue, sweeping up leaves wherever they could find them, amassing 5 or 6 bags full of them and making the paths a lot less slippery in the process.

Team two had done loads on the gates and were quite hard to entice back inside when it was time to go, they were so intent on finishing the whole gate!

And team three managed to finish moving all the items so that the room space was all clear.

You're all brilliant.

Fourteen of us headed off to monthly eats where Caroline took on social photo duties (thanks for the potatoes!) and I realized I had forgotten to promote our social on Friday - do go along if you can!

Thanks to Tim for the pun.

An amazing 33 people assembled tonight for our Halloween run to Hannah More primary school. After a zombie themed warm-up we quickly covered the short distance to the school and got to work on a trilogy of tasks

Jack's after Ghoul Club

Our main task for the evening was to brighten up the after school club with a new coat of white paint. Having delegated the leadership of this group to Jack, it was encouraging to return and find him sporting a builders helmet and confidently directing all matters paint-related. In fact everyone did a fantastic job here - rollers were rolled, brushes were brushed and extraneous staples were removed with a handy fork. As often happens with painting though there were one or two very naughty "just this last bit" culprits who were slow to leave at the end and will therefore be given detention at next weeks Goodgym.

The Eave'll Shed

Yet more paint brushes were being employed outside as the Schools playpod shed (supplied by our friends at the Children's Scrapstore) was given a new coat of blue paint. The team worked hard and managed to complete the entire surface (with Tom's height an advantage for the eaves) using only headtorches and a single portable light.

Pumpkinbed Too

Finally, a third team set to digging over the school's vegetable beds so they could be re-planted by the pupils next year. It seemed appropriate that this first required moving a stray pumpkin out of the way. In fact the shape of these beds, coupled with the eerie light given off by head torches made proceedings look somewhat like a Halloween grave-diggers convention but the results were certainly impressive with all the beds weeded and dug over by the end.

With the After Ghoul Club having a little more clearing up to do there was time for Mel to lead everyone else in some lunges and squats (thanks Mel!) before we assembled for a group photo and headed back to base. Thanks to Matt for leading a step-heavy loop back and to the traffic lights for making sure everyone had time for a few wall push-ups and squats.

Special shout out today to Tom for backmarking, Nick for visiting all the way from York and to Mair, Matt, Vicki and Clo for sporting a little fancy dress