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!

It was another big old Good Deed filled evening at GoodGym Bristol. A massive 53 runners came along to lend their hands to the good causes of Bristol. 53! You bed-der believe it. That is the Bristol record if you don't include medical students... A massive welcome and thank you to all of the new runners this evening, you were all absolutely brilliant!

Anyway, to the tales of an eve well spent. We got the bodies belonging to those helpful hands warmed up with some good old 'Shona says'. It's just like that fun game of Simon Says, but it involves burpees - so it's even more fun, right? Sofar, so good. The group then split into its three hefty sub-groups...

Got to Mala-go to the maze

Paul led a group out on a 6km run to Malago Maze, where we helped Jackie to do a massive amount of weeding to spruce the maze back into shape. The group did a fantastic job, and worked very hard to get a lot done in the time plus do the run there and back - brilliant work everyone!

It's goat to be perfect

Chris did a fabulous job of taking the second group to Bramble Hill Farm to also get stuck in with the weeds giving it a good prep-up for summer. These lucky do-gooders had an extra treat of getting to meet the goats and the pigs of the farm (and potentially spending more time getting the perfect selfie than weeding? (Not mentioning any names, Matt...)

The tables have turned

Meanwhile, the rest of the group went to help the British Heart Foundation team to set up their new store in the middle of Bristol. The team got stuck in with moving furniture, sorting books and pulling down window stickers (and managed to cajole some innocent bystanders into it too - thanks John the window-cleaner). The time flew by and we are looking forward to coming back for Part 2 in a couple of weeks' time.

After all that, everyone chair-ished a good sit down, and what better way to do it than with our June Monthly Eats at Bambalan. Flat breads and beer later, we'd sure forgotten about the squat pain. Thank you Clo for organising this!

To be honest, I've got to get a load off my chest - this run report may or may not have been written with the aim of including numerous furniture puns. Just in case they aren't quite good enough to notice, I have handily highlighted them so you can really appreciate that I am just sofa-nny.

It was an eventful night of sticky willys, black t-shirts and Panther birthdays at Bristol GoodGym. It was great to have Josie and Stephanie join us for the first time - you both put in an excellent effort and we hope to see you again soon.

A massive congratulations to Alex on hitting 50 good deeds tonight (and equal congratulations for your exceptional vegan carrot cake baking...)! We look forward to seeing you sporting your black t-shirt very soon.

A group of running bulb-planters went to help Hayley from Urban Buzz with planting bulbs outside of Bristol Cathedral as part of Urban Buzz's project to plant hundreds of bulbs around the city. Thank you to the birthday boy Paul for leading this group.

The rest of GoodGym Bristol ran to the Federation of City Farms, where Carmel explained to us the best way to tackle their overgrown garden in time for Bedminster's Secret Gardens Trail in a month's time. The group broke down brambles, shifted sticky willy, wavered weeds and rampantly raked the garden until it was looking a lot less hidden in time for its show-day. We then got a refreshing glass of juice to fuel us on our way back home (just in time for another refreshing beverage - running is thirsty work, don't you know).

PS. Thanks for keeping me away from sticky willy puns Dave.

A brave bunch of souls defied the returning April showers this evening as we ran to Victoria Park to help the Action Group fix up the willow tunnel that GoodGym Bristol helped put up two years ago. It was great to see several new faces in the crowd - we are looking forward to seeing you all again soon!

Fun fact: did you know 'Soy Sauce' means 'I am willow' in Spanish?

After Dave successfully found a bunch of short cuts (including some through the bushes...) to keep the groups neck and neck on the run there, everyone got (literally and figuratively) muddy with a very competitive game of Stuck in the Mud. The Bristol Medical Students almost got a full house of stuck GoodGymers, but the red t-shirts fought back at the very last minute.

Alex from the Victoria Park Action Group taught us about willow's wicked and wonderful ways. The willow keeps growing in all directions so the tunnel requires regular attention to keep it looking great. We were soon set to work weaving, knotting and rebuilding the willow. We even saw Paul showing us his task skills after stepping-down from Bristol Trainer! The group did a great job of fixing it up and even building some windows for the tunnel - I am sure you couldn't even feel the rain through that perfect structure at the end!

Well done to everyone for their great work tonight and thank you for welcoming me as the new Trainer for Bristol - I am looking forward to many (warmer) weeks to come!

Also, some fantastic inputs to Strava puns tonight... putting my newbie pun-attempts to shame (Matt, Darren, I am looking at you)!

A double task tonight as Dave's group set off to Dame Emily park and mine headed out to Fareshare.

A clean sweep at Fareshare

We were accompanied on our run tonight by our Fareshare host Phoebe who is still trying to rack up as many miles as possible in preparation for her team's Bristol 10k challenge. What's even more impressive is that I learned tonight that Phoebe plans to run the distance dressed as an orange! Good luck to all the Fareshare runners!

Our task was once again to clean the Fareshare vans. This time though we chucked all 22 pairs of hands at them in one go which was an interesting experiment. It turns out that this does leave the vans pretty clean although some pretty thorough inspections were needed by the outgoing trainer to ensure this was the case. It was also noted that three runners spent an awful long time sitting in one of the cabs but it must be presumed that the interior windscreen on this vehicle was left paticularly sparkling as a result and it is certainly to be hoped that the snacks which were located inside were still there when we left.

Special mention to the dustpan wielders who managed to find some dust inside the vans which were actually pretty much clear when we started.

Our main task done and having prepared litter pickers for a sub task at Riverside park, I couldn't resist taking 10 minutes to do a quick litter pick. At least Liam seemed to enjoy the challenge of carrying 20 litter pickers while running and I know everyone else enjoyed their squats while we chucked them back in the car.

Turf Guys

Meanwhile at Dame Emily park, Dave's team were to remove a section of turf to make way for some wildflower seed planting. Apparently there was even a wheelbarrow. I love wheelbarrows so this makes me a bit sad, but I guess I should be happy for everyone else and for the fact that the team finished their task and also managed to squeeze in a bit of litter picking.

Don't forget an item for Dawn

Dawn has asked if we can bring items with personal significance associations from our runs/races to the group run next Tuesday for her to use in her project.

Thanks to Alice for the pun I nicked and to Richard for the pun I almost nicked.