On an unusually warm, but wet and windy October morning, 17 runners helped the Mina Road Park Group out of a bit of a bind with bind weed at Ashley Street Park. In honour of leading my first run, star jumps were a key feature of the warm up. It soon became clear that star jumps are not everyone's favourite! Since it was a weekend, we took a leisurely pace through Riverside Park and took a tour of the roundabout under the M32 to add a few extra meters to the 6K run. Once we found Ashley Street Park, we quickly set to work freeing the apple trees and shrubbery from the bind weed that had cleverly used artichoke plants as a trellis.

Needless to say we didn't choke!

What looked like a relatively small job at first, soon turned into a huge clear out as the pile of discarded bind weed threatened to overtake the children's play area (which some GoodGymers used to indulge their inner child). After about 50 minutes, the area had been completely transformed and I was kicking myself for not taking a "before" photo. The impressive and efficient work showed just how much of a difference a few determined runners can make in less than an hour. By the time we had returned to Mud Dock, the sun was shining and many of us stayed to reward our efforts with late breakfast and cake.

Welcome to our newest runner Jason and a special thank you goes out to Dave for backmarking and to James for bringing the gloves!

We stretched our Tuesday evening to the absolute limit tonight as we took on a hilly 8k round trip to Westbury to help sort donations that had been collected for the Samara's Aid charity to support refugees in Syria.

With run leaders a bit thin on the ground there was no option but to stay together in one large group for the long run up Park Street and Whiteladies Road - so I was super-impressed that everyone worked so hard to stay together over the whole journey. The evening had been billed as a #runandtalk event so I hope that everyone managed to have a bit of chat too - even if it was just at the odd traffic light along the way!

Once at the church we were greeted with a mountain of boxes of donated items and several heaps of garments that hadn't quite made the cut. Samara's Aid aim to aim to send only the best possible quality items to show the utmost care and respect for those who have lost everything.

With only 20 minutes or so it was great to see everyone picking a task and taking the initiative to work out what needed to be done and working so brilliantly as a team. I must admit I was a little concerned about how much we would be able to get done at the start of the evening but I needn't have worried - you are all donation sorting heros!

One group marked up completed boxes to indicate their contents while another formed a human chain to move the completed boxes out of the church to the porch for collection. And others helped pack up nappies and bedding or boxed up the remaining heaps of garments into boxes for men, women or children. We even managed to get a bit of pruning done outside the church!

The weather being so awful over the weekend we had been unable to deliver our leaflets for Above and Beyond so a small group of leafleters kindly volunteered to help out here as well.

With the room completely transformed, there was time for a group photo by the church organ pipes and even a little vocal performance - which I have to say really wasn't half bad - Bristol GoodGym choir anyone?

It was all downhill on the way back and after some stretching in Queen Square we congratulated Kait on hitting 100 good deeds tonight - well done Kait!!

Thanks to Charlie and Mel for the photos - and also to Mel for organising GoodGym Eats tonight

When you're leading a GoodGym run for the first time, it's really lovely (very scary) to have Ivo, the illustrious founder of GoodGym, along for the ride. We're sure Shona is enjoying her holiday whilst we keep up the good deeds in Bristol. My Shona impression went down very well, and we were very efficient at shooing the baby starfish.

Although the run was advertised as 9K, I reassured everyone it was more like 0.9K, and it was actually only 0.6K when we'd crossed all three zebra crossings to safely arrive at FaithSpace. The lovely organisers wanted some help with gardening, mainly turning over some huge compost heaps, and some leaflet distributing for their upcoming Autumn Extravaganza. WIth 37 GooodGymmers we soon made short shrift of the leafleting and were able to head off for some extra fitness training by running around the Harbour Loop with a few challenges thrown in by the run leaders - thanks Paul, Dave, Gary and everyone else who took off around the harbour, and to our gardening run leaders Alison, Jack, Patrick and Maria. We have left another organisation utterly impressed with what we can achieve. And had a surprising 5K extra run on a lovely evening in Bristol.

A big Bristol GG welcome to Robin and João who joined us for the first time, we hope to see you again very soon.

Celebration time back at Queens Square after cool down and stretches, Mair has reached the great milestone of 50 good deeds and introduced the alternative and VERY popular celebration treat of chocolate buttons. They were perfect with a pot of tea.

Thanks for being kind to me as I was being Fake Shona I. Fake Shona II takes over next week...