Painting a fence in the dark and the rain is perhaps not the conventional way to spend the run up to Christmas, but then as we all know GoodGym is not a conventional running club. And to be fair last night we were even more unconventional by bending the rules and meeting at the task. This gave us time to do a run, complete a task and (arguably most importantly) be enjoying our GoodGym Christmas curry by 8:30pm.

We were back at Berry Brow Infant School to do a task for long term GoodGym supporter Katrina Whale who wanted us to finish some painting we had started during the warm light evenings of the summer. Last night was neither warm or dry but 6 intrepid GoodGymmers turned up at the infant school for a swift briefing and a run around the streets of Newsome. It was nice to run and see the pretty Christmas lights, arguably less pleasant was the steep hill effort up to Newsome village which certainly got some lungs and legs working. Well if we were only doing half our usual distance and eating a curry, we’d better make the run count!

By the time we ran back down Newsome hill to the school Katrina was already busy with a brush in the playground. The picket fence which we had started staining in the summer needed to be finished, and in conditions which were just about on the suitable side for painting we got on with the job. As ever some chatting kept our spirits up in the cold and damp conditions and we’d soon completed the fence leaving time enough to do another.

But come 8pm the much anticipated curry was calling, so we packed up, put on our Christmas jumpers and headed around the corner to local restaurant Laxmi for our well earned dinner. It was nice that Katrina was able to join us for the meal, along with all the night’s GoodGym crew consisting of Kati Law, Ben Godfrey, Wendy Redmile, David Bilton and Richard Byrne. A couple of other familiar faces in the form of Louise Galvin and Carol Carney also joined us for the curry too.

Thanks to everyone who joined in last night, and indeed all those people who have run and done tasks with us during 2019. I hope to see you again in 2020 doing even more good turns and willing work in out local community. Merry Christmas to you all.

Thanks to Wendy Redmile for keeping up the Christmas spirit with this week's title pun.