Well when Hitch, our usual Run Leader for Norwich, asked if I'd cover for him as he needed to be in Lapland this week, I had wondered if he was trying to get a bit of extra overtime in for Christmas as one of Santa's busy elves. But the photo he shared with us just as we were about to start, of him in a sleigh, with reindeer and a little helper, definitely gave us second thoughts as to exactly which role he was practising for!

So with that festive mood setting the scene for our last group run of the year, it was great to see so many turn out on a chilly night for our task at the Clare School to make decorations for their Christmas party.

As I am still getting over my nasty winter cough, I knew it would be suspect to do a lot of loud talking this evening so Bill very kindly helped me out with the welcome session announcements and warm up. Thanks Bill!

It is always lovely to see our Goodgym family grow so we were very pleased to welcome Hannah to her first group run. And if she needed any extra evidence that we are such a nice bunch of people to meet up with to do good and keep fit, that people keep coming back, that was provided by Amy celebrating her 50th good deed. Well done Amy, we look forward to seeing you show off your new black GG top in 2020!

After a brisk warm up to get the blood flowing nicely, we set off on the 3km route to the Clare School. Thanks to Bill for setting the pace at the front, to Jenny being back runner on the way out and to Mel for doing this on the way back.

We have visited the Clare School, which is for children with complex needs, before where Hayley, one of our runners works. We are always given a generous welcome and Hayley and her colleagues came up trumps again.

Once inside the school hall, we all dutifully felt the need to sit on the floor and listen carefully while Hayley explained that the school Christmas Party would be held there the next day and needed to be given a festive make-over to help get the children into the festive spirit. Various 'creative workstations' had been set up with different activities to get stuck in to - wrapping gifts for pass the parcel, making snow flakes for the windows, and generally making colourful, Christmassy things to put around the hall. Christmas karaoke, mince pies, juice and a Christmas tree challenge were there to add to the spirit and so we got stuck in......

35 minutes later and wow! what a transformation! Fantastic to see what talents our lovely runners have - ok so my own snowflake efforts were bit of a disaster but we'll quickly move on from that..... Hayley and her colleagues were very pleased with how much was done so quickly, with everyone getting stuck in and having fun at the same time. The pupils would be very excited to see the decorations in the morning.

So with a nice warm glow from doing such a lovely activity we set off again for the Forum where Cheska kindly 'tested' her amazing Christmas chocolate honeycomb fudge on us!!

Take care everyone. Thanks for a great Goodgym 2019 - here's to more fun and fitness in 2020. We now have a break from Monday night runs until 6th January but don't forget to check the GG page and Facebook group for community missions and social events.

Have a great Christmas and I'll leave you pondering who Santa might secretly be....

Tonight was a special occasion as Liz was completing her 50th good deed and Robert his 100th good deed!!! What an achievement :-)

Mike and Kain were taking part in their first GoodGym encounters... your first steps in achieving the above.

Thanks to Bill & Elizabeth (who was completing her unofficial milestone of 150 good deeds) for being backrunners and Hayley for her amazing photography skills.

Tonight's task was to visit Norwich Food Bank, in what is a very busy and important time of year for them so giving a good 16 hours of volunteering time to them is invaluable.

After a much needed warm-up in the cold (buy hey, it didn't rain for once!) we set off on the 3.25km trip with the topic of discussion being 'what is your favourite Xmas food?'

The main task was to create Xmas Bags for families in need during the festive season. The WI had kindly donated all of the bags and then our job was filling them with all the essential festive food.

There was also some other date sorting to do with other food items.

The evening was finished with a brownie or mince pie from Robert followed up by a trip to the pub... if Carlsberg did Monday evenings.

Next week we're Making Mince Pies at The Feed for Keeping Abreast.

Here's what we got up to at this week's Monday Rainy Run.

A big welcome to Dominic (Hannah's other half) and Mark on their 1st GoodGym encounter.

Kathryn and Hannah were completing their 10th good deeds, well done to both of you!

With it being an outdoor task, it was looking grim with the rain belting down. We began with a new style warm-up (after not being allowed to do inside The Forum this week :-|) and then we set off on the short 1.5km trot down to the Norwich Train Station, with Katy kindly being backrunner.

Sue and her amazing team of volunteers met at the Norwich Train Station gardens with an array of spades and forks (puns will be coming up soon). The job we had was to dig up deep rose bushes and the only way to do this was to fork them deep to get the end result we wanted.

As the area wasn't large enough for 26 GoodGymers, I decided we'd fork in pairs so one person would fork while the other ran a loop around Riverside then tagged their buddy and they swap over. This format happened to make it one of our most physical tasks we've had as everyone was both running and forking all evening. By the end of it we were all gleaming and a little wet, from the rain.

After nearly an hour of hard work, we headed back and stopped of in the Xmas tunnel of love for some colourful photos.

As you can imagine, there were plenty of borderline puns for the title of this run report but we voted on Jonathan's more clean cut version.

I had a personal thank you from Sue and her team for what a great job everyone had done at the task so well done everyone.

Next week we are heading to the Norwich Food Bank again to Make Xmas Boxes.

I like meeting at The Forum even more this time of year with all of the Xmas lights and the tunnel of love (light) nearby.

We had 3 new runners this week so a big welcome to Laura, Helen and Jane.

Thank you to Amy for being back runner this week.

Alice was completing her 10th good deed and Sophie her 25th good deed! Well done to both of you.

Katy, Bill and Jasmine walked to the task.

We were visiting the Hamlet Charity's Adult's Centre to play some games with their members. These games included limbo (which I'm pretty poor at!) a bell obstacle course and then we finished up with a game of just dance (which I'm also pretty poor at!).

It was great for their members to have us join them.

There were some pretty good limbo skills in the GG crew, notably Hannah, Elliot and Emily!

Next week we're doing some pruning at Norwich Train Station.

A visit to Norwich Foodbank is always a very rewarding task and for this we had a whopping 36 GoodGymers come out to attend... in the rain yet again!

A big welcome to 3 new runners in Esther, Jess and Andrew, I hope you all enjoyed your 1st GoodGym experience :-)

A thank you to Bill and Elizabeth for being back runners.

After a warm-up that included (everyone's favourite) Bear Crawls, we set out on the soggy 3km outward journey. As there were so many of us (and you all know how much I love Health & Safety...) I put everyone in pairs so that one person can be in the warehouse while the other does a running loop, then they swap over. So as well as doing good, everyone got to run a little further than they expected to ;-)

Keith, the warehouse manager, had a mixture of things for us to do, which included: date sorting tins of beans, sorting out 2020 food items, weighing crates of new items, sorting Xmas items, sorting nappies, preparing Xmas boxes, sorting coffee/tea/hot chocolate items as well as some other jobs.

After 40 minutes of doing these tasks and running in between, we set off on our way back.

Helping with Norwich Foodbank for Christmas hampers

If you'd like to help the foodbank with their donations for the Xmas boxes, they're in need of the following items:

• Tins/cartons of tomatoes
• Tinned vegetables
• Long-life fruit juice
• UHT Milk
• Pasta sauce
• Rice pudding/custard
• Instant mash
• Tinned fruit
• Tea
• Tinned meat
• Tinned fish
• Christmas treats - chocolate/sweets/crisps etc

If you bring them along to Goodgym on a Monday night, we'll collate any items together and make sure they get to the foodbank. If you can do this by the end of November this will help with distribution in time for Christmas!

Reminder of the following:

Parkour Social Jump is this Wednesday.

GoodGym Norwich Xmas Meal is on Wednesday 11th December.

If you want to join the Secret Santa you need to sign up by lunchtime today!

Next week's Group Run is a Games Night @ The Hamlet Adult's Centre.

It was nice to finally have a Monday evening where it didn't rain at all!

Sean was taking part in his 1st GoodGym encounter so a big welcome!

Bill and Elizabeth were backrunners.

This evening we were doing our quarterly visit to Eaton Park, a nice little 3km each-way route. This was after we did a little warm-up in The Forum, which consisted of relay runs, lunges and frog jumps (part of the pun!).

The tasks this week were to clean all of the benches around the band stand ahead of a carol concert and to clear the leaves (another part of the pun!) around the lilly pond.

It was a fairly quick task so after 30 minutes we set off back and it still left me with 5 minutes for a fitness session, which included a pairs workout consisting of squats and sit-ups ;-)

This was followed up with a deserved trip to the pub.

**Next week we're visiting Norwich Food Bank.