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!

FABULOUS!! 8 miles in the bag, super well done everyone and see you next week 10am BATH LEISURE CENTRE

Thirty lovely GG Bristolians assembled at Vivo for what is now our 4th card bed workshop - run as ever by our good friend, Elliot Lord. It seems like only yesterday that we did our first in that rather cosy workshop at the Island.

Clo got the warm up off to a great start, initiating a beautifully executed semi-promenade into the centre and back again - undoubtedly a move we'll repeat in the future - before we progressed to a few high knees and a Mexican shooting star. We then split into two groups - the unloading-the-car pace group and the not-unloading-the-car pace group and set off pretty sharpish so we could get to our venue at the United Reformed Church as soon as possible.

Time was of the essence tonight; we needed to be out on the dot of 7:30 to make way for a meeting that had been scheduled. Consequently, as soon as Elliot had give us a quick introduction to the basic concepts we divided into six tables and got to work on copying the templates to make bed sections from the available bike box card.

As always it was an impressive sight to see so many people become productive within seconds of their arrival. And great to see everyone working so well together - our new members and more seasoned runners as one seamless whole.

Big shout out once again to my clean-up team who constantly ferried the offcuts back to the car so we could be sure of leaving on time. And amazingly, we were completely cleared up and ready to go with 5 minutes to spare - enough time for Elliot to demonstrate constructing a bed and for Vicki to perform the traditional trial.

But wait, there's more! While all this was going on, a tatical paint team managed to complete a coat of sky blue around the side of the raised stage - thus helping out our lovely hosts at the same time. Top work painters!

The other benefit of leaving so promptly was we got back to base in good time. And at the special request of Lexi, our new recruit from Cardiff, we got cracking on a bit of fitness with a couple of stride sets along Queen Square - being sure to focus on good running form!

There wasn't time to pack up the completed card for distribution so I'm not sure how many beds we made tonight but I'll be sure to update the report once I've unloaded the car!

Thank you to Jack for leading the second group tonight - and to Alice and Charlie for backmarking!

Thanks also to Alice for the pun - two out of the last three, Alice!