Tonight we were on a mission to spread the word about missions as most of us headed off to Victoria park to deliver GG mission leaflets to the surrounding houses. Hopefully this will mean more elderly people will learn about all the fabulous DBS-checked Goodgym volunteers ready and waiting to come and sort out their gardens or help with other manual tasks around the house.

Since we also still had a few leaflets left from promoting the Emmaus warehouse sale last week, we took the opportunity to drop the rest of those off as well so a double dose of good delivered already.

But we didn't stop there. A small team were also dispatched to Kuumba community centre to help out with some sanding. The Kuumba community centre in St Pauls runs a wide range of activities and events including live events and workshops where you can learn about African dance, music, drama and literature. The term 'Kuumba' is Swahili suggesting Creativity.

I was expecting our task to be a few upstairs doors, but it turned out to be the main stage. This is good news as Nwanyi had explained to me that the edges of the stage had become a little splintered and risked hurting the feet of some of the dancers who perform there.

Finally we all returned to Queen Square for some shuttle relay races, and a series of one-minute conditioning exercises led by Matt.

I'll be standing down as GG Bristol trainer in the next few weeks so have a think about whether you would like to take on the role. An email should be going out in the next few days explaining how you can go about applying - feel free to ask me if you have any questions about what's involved

Three tasks for the price of just one Goodgym run tonight as 32 runners returned to the Pickle factory to pickle up where they left off.

The venue is home to Baggator who do youth and community work for the local Easton area. Stuart, our host is proud of their independence, secured by their ability to generate their own funding and allowing them to try innovative projects like teenage coding classes run in their theatre space in conjunction with local universities and a women-only IT class where their young children are also welcome.

Painting  

Task one was to continue painting the walls and ceiling along the stairwell and in the toilet. No surprise to see resident painter-in-chief Fi in this group.

Sanding

Task two was sanding down wood so it too could be painted in due course

Skull Scraping

The last task was to use wire brushes to remove any flaking paint from the Skull graffiti on the courtyard container. This will ultimately allow a neutral base layer to be painted so that a new graffiti design can be created. Special thanks to Clo here who generously gave up her place on the paint team to help out in what was a pretty dusty job!

After 30 mins on the task it was time to go, with the skull pretty much scraped and a lot of painting and sanding sorted.

The run back then became a game of two pace groups with walking lunges, squats and even some applause and arches by the groups to each other. Thanks to my fellow run leaders and back markers Jack, Clo and Charlie for all the fun and for keeping everyone safe.

Thanks also to Alice, Mel and Charlie for extra photos - and Alice for the pun.

Thanks for a great evening everyone - see you all soon!

It might be a Christmas break for some but we thought Redcliffe deserved a little spruce up and rather than pine fir company, six of us (with Alice back-marking) ran around the harbour loop checking out potential litter-picking spots before finishing at the beautiful St Mary Redcliffe Church and the car park/Portwall litter trove.

Lots of the house boats were lit up and we saw a fair few Christmas trees in windows creating a great build-up to the carol-singing in the church whose surrounding were much smarter after the collection of three bags of litter.

It turns out I'm rubbish at taking photos on the run in the dark, but Debs is super-photogenic and saved the day!

A mathematical warm up tonight with odds, evens, high 5s and even some prime numbers before we all headed off to Emmaus. Splitting into two groups with Charlie helping to lead the second we made short work of the 1.5k distance.

On arrival, Xanne described how Emmaus provides accomodation and training for people who were previously homeless, helping them to get back into work again either in Emmaus' own shops, taking on PAT testing, house clearances or simply going on to find a job outside the community.

We were then given our task for the evening and amazingly Christmas had come early for Bristol Goodgym! We were to get all the Christmas decorations out of storage and sort them either for sale or for use in the shop displays.

Kait quickly saw the potential for a human chain to move the decorations to the ground floor and in no time we had groups sorting tinsel from baubles while sporting various festive garments and in some cases breaking into some Christmas singing!

Several people were tasked with test-assembling Christmas trees to make sure all the parts were there and it was heart-warming to see how these individuals quickly bonded with their trees. See the photos for evidence of this. Does Dave look proud of little Samyule? What about Liam - a little protective of Uncle Firn? And surely Lisa is particularly chuffed with baby Noel!

Another group tackled the largest of the trees, puzzling out all the colour coded branches - while Mel set about testing the Christmas lights to make sure they worked. Another group set to work decorating one of the trees .

By the end we had boxes of decorations ready for sale and trees all ready for display. With a festive group photo in the bag, we headed back to base, squeezing in a few step-ups and squats on the way back to help ensure we can all fit into our Christmas jumpers next month,