Ah, what a lovely run! With the sun beaming down on us once again, loads of great people met up at Vivo Sports Club to run to the charity Emmeaus which is dedicated to helping homeless people finding employment and get themselves in to their own homes.

The run there was pleasantly uneventful, and we made it to our task in good time where we met with Jessica from Emmeaus who introduced us to the charity and also told us how to say the name! (Em-may-ous is the phonetic spelling). She handed up gloves and tools and the gang set to weeding all around the building.

She also kitted Darren and Chris L up in steel toe capped boots (that she just happened to have on hand....), gave them a sledgehammer and pointed them in the direction of some cobbles that needed smashing. DARREN SMASH! CHRIS SMASH! HULK SMASH...sorry, getting carried away.... Chips were flying everywhere, cobbles were obliterated, and then rest of the team dived in to clear the cobbles away as as fast as possible, in some cases using a random wok that they'd found.

They also planted some flowering shrubs; Jessica had planted a hydrangea a few weeks ago and no one had sat on it or squashed it, so she felt it was safe to plant a few more shrubs.

As they weeded, a lovely selection of rubbish was found. Today's highlights included:
A traffic cone.
Half a bottle of vodka
A full and unopened bottle of cider (rather nice cider, but no one wanted to drink it!).

We did a lot but there's still more to do, so we'll be back next week to continue smashing the cobbles (some of the ladies fancy a go!), trim bushes, weed and do random things with cooking implements.

Lastly HUGE congrats to Matthew, Emily and Kim who've done their 50th, 50th and 200th run respectively. Also a MAHOOOOSIVE Goodgym welcome to newbies Fran, Harriet, Debbie and Lisa. Thanks for coming to run with us and we hope you'll be back.

To check if you actually read this run report, next week the code word is 'pink wafers'. Say it to me at some point in the run. There's no prize, I just sometimes wonder who gets all the way to the end of my reports!

21 lovely people met up at Vivo Gym for what they thought was going to be a longer run to do some gardening in south Bristol... due to a mix-up in scheduling, however, it was not to be. Luckily fate had it planned that we had another task up our sleeve; one that was indoors and local, which was lucky as it was looking a little wet outside!

We split in to two groups. Group 1 ran with Chris to Colston Tower to help with a big amount of shredding and folder sorting (we know how to get the exciting stuff here at GoodGym!). They were inside. They stayed dry...

Group 2 went with me to head to the Amphitheater until Fraser mentioned that it was full of tents. And then it started to rain. We managed to find a bit of dry space to run in that was right next door to a gym on the Harbourside - it was nice of us to give those people stuck inside on their treadmills something to look at, wasn't it!

Even though we were not going to be gardening, I'd brought my bag of gloves with me as I had a 'game' in mind which involved 2 teams, 2 piles of gloves and a lot of sprinting. I was hoping for more cheering, but it seemed that people were choosing to breathe instead!

After about 5 minutes of this the rain eased off and we ran back to Colston Tower to switch places. Group 1 warmed up a little, and I was going to change the game (aka drill) a little but it started to rain again, so we repeated the same drill that Group 2 did.

After a lot of running, glove snatching and sprinting, we met up back at Queens Square where we found Group 2 doing some jump squats and plyo lunges, courtesy of Kevin - clearly a man after my own heart! Group 1 joined in and then we had a good old stretch at the end.

Great team work gang!

A super six GoodGymers ran 9.4k to the Knowle West Childrens Centre to help them prepare a Wildflower Area

What a wonderful run and task!

Meeting at Roll For The Soul, we welcomed Steve Coman from London, who usually runs with GG Islington and GG Camden, who was in Bristol to see family, take in a concert and do a spot of GoodGym tourism as part of the seemingly ever increasing London-Bristol GoodGym Exchange. Great to have you along Steve!

We stuck together for a slightly longer than usual run, mainly flat but with a nasty hill up over the Northern Slopes as we approached our destination.

We were met at the Knowle West Childrens Centre by our fabulous task hosts - Lucy, Tina and Sarah - who showed us the brilliant play area at the Centre and outlined our twofold task to us:

• Richard, Mike and Steve set about digging and chopping out dock leaves which had somewhat taken over the wildflower area.
• Leslie, Chris and Dave tackled the removal of weeds and grass from around a group of fruit trees before laying and spreading some fresh mulch - we love mulch! - around the trees.

Given the longer run our time on the task was limited but did we smash it? Of course we did!

There was just enough time to enjoy some great refreshments of juice, biscuits and ginger cake before heading back into town for a cool down, stretches and lunch.

A lovely task for a lovely community group, who's amazing work can be seen at www.knowlewestchildrenscentre.bristol.sch.uk

Thanks to Lucy for sharing some great photos with us!

What a lovely run! It was hot for the first part as a seemingly endless horde of runners left Vivo Gym to run to the Childrens Scrapstore to sort...er... scrap! We found a great rhythm and were soon in the labyrinthine Scrapstore.

We were given several tasks to do - make toys safe by removing batteries, tags and other stuff, cutting up lengths of rope with a heated knife that smelt quite pungent, cutting up netting and fabric (which looked like a massive old tent!), taking thread from industrial sized cotton reels, and the GoodGym classic of taking water damaged phones out of boxes and sorting them in to their component parts - note that we've been to the Scrapstore around 8-10 times and every time we've had those phones to deal with. Well, they are NO MORE! The last 6 boxes were sorted. Phew!

As always at the Scrapstore, we found a variety of random and unexpected items - this time it was a cage full of shop floor dummy legs! These were used in our group photo at the end, and whilst there was a bit of a faff to get them back in to the warehouse, we warmed up by running up and down on the kerb just outside.

Running back was more pleasant - the heat had abated somewhat and we cooled off in Queens Square with a few exercises for our core, and a lovely lying down stretch sequence. As it had been my birthday the day before, the gang spared no expense and presented me with one of the Scrapstore phones, a tuft of rope and a bit of glitter. It almost brought a tear to my eye...

Massive mchugebig congratulations to Richard for making it to the grand number of 100 runs with GoodGym, and also belated happy birthday to my birthday twin Alex, who was also celebrating the day before!