Bristol is no GoodGym group which only gets out to hit their new year's resolutions and January challenge goals: on our first run of February we had a massive 62 people join us to run and walk to do good. It was great to have a massive 10 new runners join us - welcome Chloe, Becky, Owen, Aidan, Steve, Beth, Reuben, Barnaby, Dom, Emma and Sophie! It was also great to have Ivo pop by on his travels to the South West - thanks Ivo!

Brooming marvellous

Alison stepped in to lead a group to Task 1 of the evening to Hannah More Primary. The group were tasked with making the place look spic and span, so it was all hands on brooms and all brooms on deck to get the place sweeped up and then everyone did a mass litter-pick of the grounds until it was spotless. They got this done so quickly they had time to do some relays on their return to get their heart rates up!

Meanwhile, Richard led the hardcore mob up (and up) to Task 2 in Clifton to do some leafleting for Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Not only did they conquer the hills, they also delivered 400 leaflets around the area - phwoar.

I introduce you to: The Red Barrows

Melanie was leading the walking group to do some additional jobs at Redcliffe Nursery, where we had helped last week. The group had a huge long list of tasks to get through, but there was so much sand from the sandpit which had been blown all over the playground in the recent bad weather, that they spent their whole session clearing this all back into the sandpit. Oh, and importantly setting aside some time to choreograph GoodGym's very own aerobatics display team, the impressive Red Barrows.

Sally is waiting for you

The rest of us headed up the cycle path for Task 3, helping The Matthew Tree Project with our regular donation sorting. The team were split into groups for tin-sorting (or sor-tin more like), crate washing and separating the food donations into food type. Everyone was also lucky enough to get a chance to meet Sally for a quick (but who knew 3 minutes and 25 seconds could feel so long?) session of Sally Up Sally Down. Gary admired how well Matt scrubbed up, and we all headed back on our way.

Once back, it was time for a good stretch off and for our GoodGym Eats for this month to Turtle Bay organised by Clo - thanks Clo!

It was a chilly one for us tonight but it didn't stop the droves of GoodGymers once again coming out to do as much good as they could on this January eve. It was great to have Naomi and Ashleigh join us for the first time tonight - we hope to see you again soon!

We tried to master our brain and body warm-up again with different moves for each number... slightly better than last week, still a lot of brain warming up required. Once we were warm, we split into two groups. Alice was leading a smaller group to The Matthew Tree Project. We did our main session of helping them earlier in the month, but as they still have loads of donations to sort through following the generosity of people in the run up to Christmas, they asked if the group could come back for another session. Off down the cycle path they went, and they had a jolly half an hour of sorting as many tins as they could, much to Amy from TMTP's delight.

Abs-olutely amazing

The rest of the group headed to St Paul's Adventure Playground, where we met Guy, Rachel and 6-month old Rosa, who introduced us to the evening's tasks. There was leaf sweeping and litter-picking to be done, so the group were armed with brushes and litter-pickers and got to work making it clear for the local children again, getting an ab workout at the same time with their brooming. Another group were tasked with moving wood chip from one location to make a soft landing for the new rope swing. And a final group were screwdriver-ing between the planks on the play structure to remove leaves and make it stronger and last longer. It's no visit to a playground without a cheeky play, so we set off on a GoodGym chain down the steepest slide in the world (or maybe the steepest in St Paul's, Bristol...)

Once we were back in Queen Square, there was time for tonight's fitness session. Although some people may have played an alcohol-based game to Roxanne before, it was time for something much more fun. Once the group were sick of the name Roxanne and could burpee no more, we stretched off, before celebrating Julie's achievement of reaching 100 Good Deeds last week with the now-traditional Centurion Gallop. Well done Julie! We got to celebrate with some delicious flapjacks and brownies from Julie, then head on our way.

WOOHOO GoodGym Bristol Tuesday night Group Runs are back with a bang for 2020!! We don't do things in halves here at Bristol so we brought in the New Year in style with our new record of 70 runners on a single Group Run! This included 14 lovely first timers - welcome to the gang everyone!

To put all these hands to good use we split into three different tasks...

Sofa Away

Group 1: Emmaus

Richard led a running group and Melanie led a walking group to Emmaus to give our monthly helping hands with sorting their donations in their huge warehouse. On this occasion, it included the newly-founded sport of Sofa Smashing - who knew?

Group 2: The Litter-Pickers

Maria and Alice led the chatty groups and I led the returning (still casual) Greyhounds on our 6km run to and from Lawrence Hill. Alice then did a stellar job of co-ordinating a team of litter-pickers to pick up 5 bags of litter in just 25 minutes from the local area. Definitely a task which needed doing, so thank you Alice and litter-picking dream team!

Group 3: The Matthew Tree Project

Meanwhile, the rest of the group split into A and B to do a 50:50 session helping The Matthew Tree Project with sorting their massive load of donations which they had gathered in the run up to Christmas. As the warehouse was packed, the rest of the group were outside doing The Uptown Funk Dance* and sprint relays.

*may not look good on the dancefloor.

The Fresh Face of Bristol

After sorting a mass of Amy from TMTP's donations and puffing a bit more than previously due to our dancing, we headed back to Queen Square and reunited the groups to play a game of When was Keep On Movin' by Five released. It was a nail-biting one, but Tim eventually stole the prize of the correct answer (1999, in case you were wondering).

We then had the chance to celebrate the wonderful Sarah hitting her 50th Good Deed tonight. Well done Sarah!! We look forward to seeing you sporting your black tee soon!

And that was a wrap! (Well, after we found Alex was looking as fresh-faced as a 17-year-old on tonight's run anyway). We will see you all very soon for more January Challenge Madness!

Pun credit to Gary