Connect Four(x2,500 Bristol Good Deeds)

Tonight was the night. The stars aligned, the figures added up, Matt's beady eyes on GoodGym stats came to great use and the five years of Bristol GoodGymers being jolly good people culminated in

GoodGym Bristol hitting 10,000 Good Deeds!!

Just two weeks after GoodGym hit a grand old total of 100,000 good deeds, you have shown what a massive contribution you have all been. You are all amazing!

But first, what Good Deed got us up to this big old milestone? We gathered in our usual spot to run out to Easton to return to Cafe Connect. It was great to have some new runners with us tonight - welcome to Gemma, Rhiannon and Teresa! Libby and her team at Cafe Connect are planning to do a grand reopening of the space as soon as they can, and had drawn up a big list of tasks to keep all 34 GoodGymers well and truly occupied. The team were quickly split into small teams each with their own tasks.

The Garden Group

The painting team gave the inside and outside walls a fresh lick of paint to finish off the job they had started last time. The gardening team got green-fingered by giving the tomato plants a helping hand and planting some new ones. The wood-chopping team got ferocious with saws and axes to split up wood into kindling.

The Kitchen Kids

In the kitchen, the group did a stellar job keeping their hands above their heads for half an hour, and had the added bonus of taking down lots of excess plastic and foam from the kitchen which will massively help the Cafe Connect team with their health and safety.

The Cafe Crew

Inside, Kait found her new passion for varnishing (if you need a varnisher, you know who to call) and Gary got reunited with the table he so lovingly sanded all those weeks ago. The magnetic board team spent a long time holding the board against the wall (shown beautifully by Alex and Freddie in the pictures). After 30 minutes, they realised that they couldn't actually stand there until the cafe opened, so the team eventually found some nails to keep it in place miraculously hands-free.

After a speedy half an hour, much to the group's disappointment, we had to pack up our toys and head back on our 3km run home. The group zoomed along, and we were soon stretching off our evening's antics. Little did we realise that Matt was going to be trumping his own birthday cake (but not his own face on his birthday bottle) with the 10,000 good deeds, showstopping, Carl the Caterpillar cake, topped by an impressive array of numbered sparklers. These were so decidedly hard to light that it led to a fantastic countdown from well...one to..zero. We very much appreciated each one though, Matt!