Another fantastic turn out tonight as 30 of us set out on a fairly short run over to Dame Emily Park in Bedminster.

The park is cared for by the Dame Emily Park Project (DEPP), a small group of volunteers who work hard to keep the space tidy and the equipment maintained as well as hosting events for the local community.

On arrival at the park we were met by Ursula and Sarah who split us into groups and set about equipping us all with litter pickers and rubbish bags. We were then all assigned different zones of the park and tasked with clearing away all the litter we could find.

With October fast approaching the early evening light is starting to fade fairly quickly and the simple task of navigating around the park was made somewhat more challenging as a result. It was nice to see a few head torches appear and with a couple of our new lights in play we managed to carry on a little longer and finish our task.

Apparently the park had had unexpectedly been cleared early that morning so we were expecting that maybe there wouldn't be too much to do, but Goodgym runners have a real knack for finding litter so it was no surprise to finish up with over 10 full bags of rubbish by the end of our session. Amazing work everyone - DEPP really appreciated all our efforts. It was nice to have some of the skaters in the park helping out too.

Another short run and we found ourselves back at Queen Square with a lttle time to spare so we finished off with a trio of running trains heading around the perimeter. The bursts of speed required to move to the front are a good form of interval train-ing (get it?).

Finally we presented a set of red shoelaces to Kerry for brining along here sister Megan on Saturday and we promised a similar award to Abigail next time for bringing along Sophie tonight.

A very warm welcome to our new runners, Kate and Hollie. Hope you had fun!

A double whammy tonight as both our task and run leader had to be substituted at the very last minute.

Our trainer Gary was unwell so he was unable to join us for his penultimate Bristol run. (There were some rumours that he just needed the extra time to put the finishing touches to his fancy dress costume for his farewell session next week).

Not only that, but our original task had been canceled! Fortunately, the emergency red GG Bristol phone had rung just hours earlier with an urgent request for help down at the Malago Greenway Berry Maze. The project (which we visited just last weekend) had run into difficulties after ploughing had revealed a veritable mine field of rubble that was sure to take out the rotivator when it arrived later in the week and put paid to the Mock A Maze day planned this Saturday.

Naturally we jumped at the chance to help out - our members love nothing more than to help a project in need - so we headed out along the Malago Greenway and got stuck in moving as many rocks as possible out of the soil and into a pile. Meanwhile Tom, Ian, Alex, Andrew and Richard were on wheelbarrow and refuse sack duty moving the pile into a location for collection by a skip.

Everyone worked hard collecting up rubble and rubbish. As is often the case we made some interesting discoveries - a shoe, an old orangina bottle and indeed it appeared that on this occasion that we had discovered an ancient car burial site as first Liam uncovered a tyre and then Rachel located a steering wheel in amongst all the dirt.

By the time we were due to leave we had uncovered most of the rocks so Mock a Maze should be able to go ahead!

Thanks everyone for adapting so willingly to the changed plan. Raluca was really grateful for our help and this was one of those occasions when it's difficult to see who else could have done all that manual labour at such short notice. You all rock!

Our work finished, we returned to base and then headed off to our monthly eats. A really great turnout at the meal tonight (as you can see on the selfie!) - lovely to have you all along both at the task and at the restaurant afterwards!

Thanks to Dave for leading the second group and to my back markers Alex and Clo. Thanks also to Caroline, Richard and Jack for the glove run!

Welcome also to new runners Emma and Richard

Don't forget it's (optional) fancy dress next week for Gary's last run. No theme, the more random the better!

Refreshed from a bank holiday a massive group of ravishing runners met at Vivo to help tidy up Spring Hill with Incredible Edible and the yard at Emmaus.

20 runners came with me (Gary) to Emmaus. We ran around a mile to get there before being greeted by the ever smiling Xanne. She gave us an introduction and explained that our task would be a little different from the usual. Today we were to sort through all of the donated items that were put into the yard as they were deemed trashier than a romantic airport novel cover being read aloud by Oscar the Grouch. We were put to work smashing furniture, tearing fabric from mattresses, smashing electrical equipment to separate the plastic and metal parts and tool sorting.

New runners Roanna and Guido worked alongside veteran and recent conqueror of the Matahorn Ultra Madahorn Matt to sort a plethora of tools. While the electronics team had a smashing time a really swept the floor with their dance routines. But biggest shout goes out to the team taking on the task of removing the fabric from a mattress that had every spring individually wrapped. Needless to say they did not quite have enough time but we will be back to finish the job.

After finishing up and leaving Xanne happy with our work we ran back to Queen Square for a game of Chicken Otter Badger before stretching out.

On root to snow berry who's boss

The remaining 10 runners joined Hannah of Incredible Edible to mercilessly destroy the (superficially appealing) snowberries that were taking up valuable edible space that could be used for planting tasty food.

The 10 surely did the work of 20 and after haf an hour snowberry remains littered the path. Special kudos to Sophie who managed to break off one of the prongs on her fork in her enthusiasm and to the Godfather who totally laid waste to a particularly tough snowberry root.

Farewell from Goodgym Bristol to Louis who is heading home after finishing his job in Bristol. Hope to see you on the Birmingham run report soon, Louis!

Thanks for a great evening guys. It was hot and humid but you smashed it putting the jobs to bed no problem a-tool. Snow runder our task hosts reallly dig what we do and root for us all the way!

See you next time!

On a splendid summer evening over 30 smiling runners met to run to Bedminster to help the Patchwork Project to fix up some street gardens that were in weed of some attention.

The patchwork project are led by the ever welcoming Laura and Liz who met us after our 1 mile run from Vivo. They have several areas of ground in the area that they tend to planting bulbs and plants to make the street beautiful. Recently the beds on Stackpool Lane had been damaged really badly by what appeared to be a drunk gorilla wielding a strimmer while pretending it was a mic stand and performing a tribute to Freddy Mercury in full flow of rendition of I want to break free. So the task was simple. Stop, snip, chop, weed, and tidy the beds.

Runners new and regular set to work quickly choosing a patch of land to give their attention to and set to work. Alex and Neil took down some pretty big flora scalps while a couple of new runners set about planting bulbs in a patch that had been decimated by some recent waterworks. Not the crying kind hopefully, more the pipes and taps kind of palaver.

Soon it became apparent that due to our fantastic turn out we would have the job done well within time. This gave me the opportunity to take some energetic souls out for a trip around the harbour while the rest stayed on to finish the final few jobs. My gallant bunch performed sprint after sprint focusing on their form by staring at scaffolding. Hats off to you all for accepting the challenge every time I yelled "See that lampost? Sprint to it!". You were brilliant.

We all met back in Queen Square for a cool down and a stretch to round off what was a really fun evening. Shouts out to David for gaining his 50th deed on Saturday and therefore his coveted black GoodGym t-shirt, and to Alice (the) Whale for becoming our 15th centurion by completing her 100th good deed on her birthday no less! Well done Whale, we're so lucky to have you and your massive hair in our group, you fricking rock!

That left nothing more to do then to go and get some pizza and cider to celebrate so we all lived apply ever after...

Until next time,

Gary