With the first warm evening of the year (SEVENTEEN DEGREES PEOPLE), the troops gathered for another evening of doing Good. We were joined by a whopping nine first-timers - welcome Andrew, Georgia, David, Simon, Harry, Liam, Dom, Vicky and Emese, it was great to have you!

Tonight we helped with two different tasks...

Surf and Astroturf

Gary took a group out to get all rubbery at St Werburgh's Community Centre. They are laying astroturf this weekend in their play area so the team had the job of bagging up all of the rubber ready for the new surfacing, leaving an even layer to keep it bouncy. This resulted in a very mucky 10 GoodGymers, but very happy at having spent the evening playing.

A-head of the game

Meanwhile, the rest of us went to help with our regular task, Felix Road Adventure Playground. We were greeted by the team and split into tasks. Tonight we were:

• Litter-picking (following a litter-full half-term)
• Cleaning and tidying the art room
• Moving the compost heap and storage
• Fixing the fencing around the wood storage
• Discussing that Richard's favourite fruit is either an olive or a kumquat and wondering which is more strange
• Being scared by Tom's new friend, a decapitated Barbie head

All of the tasks were completed with our classic speed, but the fence was proving a bit more tricky with its technical-requirements. While the fencing team worked on, the rest of us started a partner chair-hold competition. This soon ended with several GoodGymers lying on the floor and some very bemused task-owners.

We headed back through the ever luck-reliant traffic-light maze of Easton for an impressively quick relay with storming sprinting by all of the teams!

When they signed up to help with leafleting and gardening and cleaning tonight, none of the runners quite knew what was in store!

The group were splitting into two tonight to help Above and Beyond and Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group. After warming up, the leafleting crew bounded off towards St Michael's Hill. Bounding soon turned to jogging as we started the long climb over to Redland, but the group had incredible stamina and everyone got to the top looking fresh.

When we arrived in Redland, the group split into four teams for the leafleting competition (much to Alice's disappointment). Each team was allocated a different area to leaflet, a time-cap, and a shred of competition to be the first team back. Gary, Patrick, Kait and Chris flew back, breaking what must be a record of delivering 60 leaflets in just 9 minutes. The second team were hot on their heels, coming in with 10 minutes left on the clock. While the other two teams were nowhere to be seen, the first two showed-off just how they had got so quick by practicing hill sprints, before being joined by the third team for the chair-lunge relay. Perfectly timed for the end of the fitness and the end of the time-cap, the final team returned back. 250 leaflets lighter!

Meanwhile, Maria wonderfully led the other half of the group over to Redcliffe where we were due to be helping Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group with gardening and cleaning at Faithspace. As the cleaners got to work, the gardeners were distracted by a woman who had lost her children. With a much more important task on their hands, over the next hour the team then assisted the local community and police in delivering the children back to safety.

The groups returned to base to recount their tales and be grateful that the incident had a happy ending. Welcome to Nathalie who joined us for the first time tonight, come back for a more by-the-book GoodGym soon!

It was great to have a crowd of new faces with us tonight - welcome Fiona, Thomasina, Charlotte, Lia and Sarah!

Carb Load

We all know that we should carb load before a serious run, so we started tonight off with a serious game of Hot Potato. Runners were knocked out as we passed the squat jump around the circle, until eventually we crowned Richard as the least coach-y potato of the night.

Mount-pelier

Warmed up, off we set to Montpelier, where Bristol Waste had received three separate reports of litter in the past few days. This involved much more uphill running than many of the group bargained for, but some asked for more and set off on some hill sprints on the way.

When we arrived, the group split into three to cover the areas Bristol Waste had told us about. In actual fact, the streets varied from littered to pretty spotless - had we been beaten to it by an alternative group of do-gooders?! We still gathered in 5 bags of litter, which we left in our designated spot for Bristol Waste to collect.

Something fishy

Not wanting to waste our uphill run to get there, we also spread the word about how older people can get help from GoodGym in the area and did some work for the Yellow Fish scheme. We chalked yellow fish next to the drains in the area to increase awareness of people not putting water pollutants down their local drains to improve wildlife and water quality in local rivers and streams.

After all of this was all complete, we ran back to base, with just enough time to ensure we got to stop for squats, stairs and chair holds along the way!