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.

Celebrations galore

Another massive night of celebrations at GoodGym Bristol - MASSIVE congratulations to our latest Centurion, Caroline, who earned her 100th Good Deed tonight! It was a pleasure getting to celebrate it with you (sorry, Sheffield!) and you sported the Centurion outfit with grace! Not only this, it was Danica and Mair's first day of celebrating a new year (Happy birthday both!), and it was Paul's first group run since he hit his 400th Good Deed at the weekend (what a hero)! Between all these celebrations, it is amazing that we managed to get a task done. But, do not despair, I have tales of not one, but two Good Deeds we successfully completed tonight...

Welcome to the new runners, Georgia, Lawrence, Jack and Deborah who joined us tonight! It was great to meet you all and we hope to see you all back soon.

A puzzling task

After a warm-up - which primarily got the GoodGym brains cooking but also managed to get their legs pumping - the Walking Group set off on their merry way and the remaining huge group of runners bunched our way across Castle Park with fab back-marking from Dave.

The team split into two and Alice led a bunch of 20 GoodGymers inside Emmaus. Emmaus help homeless people to get their lives back on track with housing and employment opportunities. Tonight, the group were helping sort out the warehouse. This largely included sorting the puzzles and games donations, which resulted in the GoodGymers brains being further exercised - what a mental workout of an evening!

Alice finally managed to pull the team away from their puzzles to say goodbye to Emmaus until next time (where there is some talk of smashing concrete, stay tuned...).

Don't leave any doors a-jar

Meanwhile, the rest of the group were being briefed on the brand new sport Marmalade Orienteering. The Marmalade Trust is a wonderful small charity in Bristol which puts on Christmas lunches for older people who would otherwise be alone on Christmas day. As they are a tiny charity, they rely on volunteers to help them as much as possible. Our Good Deed orienteers split into five teams to hunt down community hot-spots to post referral letters and posters to. Along the way, they dropped even more posters off at places in the community where older people might see the opportunity.

With points and prizes up for grabs, the teams ran quickly and worked fast. They chose different tactics - while the Green Team stayed close to get the first-back points, the Red Team went big on the additional community spots points. It was all to play for, and then some delayed returns and an incredibly questionable points system meant to Green Team won with a whopping 1150 points! The other teams ap-peeled the points system and the prizes were shared by everyone (apart from the marmalade, which will be fueling Dave's mornings for the comings weeks).

After all that sticky work, the group ran back with only one stop for squats and lunges and were soon settled in to a pile of 100-winged cakes baked by Caroline's fair hand.

Well done everyone and well done again to Caroline for her 100th Good Deed!

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!