It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Everywhere you go That's where GoodGym comes in of course, with Bristol numbers in force Sorting donations and cleaning crates as they go

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Food surplus in the warehouse store But the prettiest sight to see, is at the Matthew Tree Where GoodGym helps food parcels go out the door

50 runners in red, to knock the jobs on the head Around the streets of Bristol Lining up tins and weighing all things Filling up a sandpit so the kids can dip their toes And Shona's got them doing lots of burpees outside again

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Everywhere you go We ran back along the cycle path, with another good deed in the bag Lighting up the pavement with our headtorches-a-glow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas We'll see Matthew Tree in the new year And the thing that will make 'em ring is the extra GoodGymers we'll bring With a January challenge to turn our good up a gear

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas This year's group runs are no more But the prettiest sight to see is the Pieminster meal for fourty, Which Alice organised so we could all have mash-galore. Sure it's Christmas, once more

Tonight, 40 runners left the bonfires for the evening and headed to the streets to get into a different kind of festive spirit. It was great to have Francesca join us for the first time tonight - welcome Francesca! With a last minute change of plan for the British Heart Foundation, we got to work with distributing the pile of flyers which Children's Hospice South West had provided us with to help them advertise their Santas on the Run event on 8th December.

Santa Claus is Running through Town

Melanie set off with Jack to start the walking group for tonight (making a lovely GoodGym archway for us along the way), and then the rest of us headed towards Southville to get distributing. The group were split into 6 teams and allocated a road each to get leafleting. The teams spread out and in no time and spread the news around the area. The first team back got the brilliant prize of getting to do the most squat jumps and lunges while the rest of the teams got back to the base.

Relay-ing the news

We then headed to our second station where we did our leafleting relay, with Teams 5 and 6 skimming the win a few seconds ahead of Teams 1 and 2. Meanwhile, poor Teams 3 and 4 and pulled the short straw and were on a much longer relay length, so managed to get some extra training in!

We headed back to Queen Square where we added to the night's relaying with our new game: Shona's Deck of Cards featuring lots of burpees, lunges and Darren trying to knock me off my feet with his sprinting.

After all of this, we wished all the weekend's racers good luck and headed to Chilli Daddy for this month's Eats, proving that you don't need fireworks for fire. 🌶️

It was great having Harry, Faria, Kerry, Lucy, Liz and Polina join us for their first GoodGyms tonight and to have Rosie join us for her first GoodGym Bristol session! We were also lucky to have Danica with us who was celebrating her birthday (woohoo! 🎉) and Alex and Emma returning from their recent marathons.

With 46 runners and walkers, we got warmed up with a game of Truth Or Lie with - like most of my warm-up games - a questionable level of understanding of what was going on by most of the group and only vague warmth achieved. We then split into two groups, with Dave leading a smaller group to Emmaus and the rest of us going to St Werburgh's Park Nursery.

Scrubbing up nicely

The Emmaus group were tasked by Xanne from the charity to clean the bric-a-brac ready for sale. They channeled their inner domestic gods and goddesses and did a better job than we do in our own houses of scrubbing up. As always at Emmaus, there is an underlying challenge of find the weirdest donation/prop/hat. This week's contenders included some butterflies and a classic lampshade hat.

Purplesfully doing good

Meanwhile, it was time to play one of our other favourite games at St Werburgh's Park Nursery: Who Can Not Get Paint On Themselves During A Painting Task. This week's added challenges: * The dark * The colour purple

We were met by Mandy from the nursery who had invited us there to help with painting the fencing of a reflection garden they have created in memory of one of their colleagues who passed away earlier this year. We were honoured to be able to be a part of this project, so we balanced a variety of spotlights, lights and torches in the dark area and 14 of our handy GoodGymers got straight to work.

The rest of the group weeded an entire planter at the front, and got stuck in with digging out bindweed, chopping back bushes and general tidying.

Soon it was time for us to head back, and we dragged the reluctant painters away from the final touch-ups on the fence to jog our way back to Queen Square. Great work everyone!