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!

Tonight, more than 40 runners turned up to find out what the mystery challenge would be in store for them... Welcome to Maddie, Katherine, Nik, David, Taj and George, who joined us for the first time.

Firstly, Sally took a small group of runners to the city centre of Bristol. There, they split into four small groups to distribute tea and coffee to homeless people around the city centre. Despite one flask mishap, the team managed to distribute four packets of biscuits alongside over twenty hot drinks on this cold winter's night. Brilliant work, team!

Meanwhile, the rest of us ran to Bedminster to start the Christmas Cheer Challenge. After each team's items were distributed, they had half an hour to get all of their good deed tasks complete. Each team had a particular area to flyer, a team photo to take, a packet of mince pies to donate to passers-by and as much litter-picking as possible along the way. Between them, they got through a whole load of flyers to help Above and Beyond advertise for this Thursday's Christmas Star Concert, gave out 24 mince pies (even if it was to pub-attendees, as one group did!), took some impressively creative team photos (evidenced above) and picked up 7 bags of litter. This included the strangest bit of the litter of the night by Richard, of a new Noah and the Whale single - only in Bristol.

Despite tough competition, Kim's team won the challenge based on the amount of litter picked (accusations were hinted at with her incredibly good local knowledge of litter hotspots) - although, in true GoodGym fashion, everyone was a winner tonight.

At least, that was the case until we returned to do the even more contested challenge of a relay contest with a carry-your-team round. Previous litter allies were eyed-up on their strength and lightness. Soon, smallest members of each group were being flung around with little care while concentration was on finishing that lap. Gary's team solidifed their win (some would say they turned a litter victory into a big victory) with their impressive piggyback technique. As everyone headed off into the night discussing the tactics of the Queen's Lift v. the Stretchered Person (ahem, Danica's team), we know it can only be a matter of time until the rematch...

A whole leaf-lot of good tonight, as we faced leaves and leaflets, harbour runs and hills and digging and deeding.

We started with a run along the harbourside to get to our task with Mel as a brilliant back-marker. Due to the traffic-free route, the group got a treat of extra stops for squats and press-ups, yay!

We quickly got to tonight's task, the Church of Holy Trinity in Hotwells. Here we met Suzanne from the Redcliffe and Hotwells Community Development group. Suzanne explained the tasks that they needed help with at the church and the group were split into the leaf-raking and bagging team, a digging team and a leafleting team. It is unusual for GoodGym to be outdone (especially on noise) but the local choir managed to sing through the 30+ runners digging and raking outside. We will need to work on '500 Deeds' for the rematch...

Unbe-leaf-able

Within 30 minutes, the Digging Team had successfully turned the soil ready for new winter bulbs to be planted and the Leaf Team had cleared all of the pathways and grass, making the area safe for pedestrians to walk on without slipping and filling a whopping 27 bags of leaves.

Big shout out to Hannah who won the all-important Best Leaf Competition (and, even more impressively, carried it all the way back)!

Take it or leaf-let

Meanwhile, the leafleting team were not to be upstaged. With some very logistical leafleting to be organised, the group covered all of the key areas and delivered 4 leaflets to each door, spreading the word of the Community Group and of Above and Beyond, who have a series of challenges and events people can take part in to help them raise money. Not to forget that some of the group also had to cover some big hills while they did this.

Soon, the group had finished their jobs and after a handful of hardy GoodGymers completed the steep optional hill sprint, we headed back along the water home. And this time the group only had to stop once for sprint and squat intervals. What a re-leaf. Well done everyone!

If I had 11 medals today they would have been handed out gratefully to the 11 heroes who braved the rain and cold to come and help out with weeding the Berry maze. Truly epic efforts from everyone today!

A decision to defer our secondary task of leaflet distribution meant that we could focus all our efforts on clearing weeds from a couple of extra patches in the maze. (I confess to feeling more than a little pride in seeing Barney point out the patches we had cleared previously). This was successfully achieved with hoes, trowels and gardening gloves, donned as much for warmth as hand protection.

Cold hands were also an obstacle for our trio of post-bashers who not only reset a couple of the wooden boundary markers but somehow managed to manipulate a screw driver on the cross sections.

With the briefest of pauses for some goji berries and yellow raspberries (check out Matt's enjoyment savouring these in the photo) and a traditional look-how-cold-we-are photo, we finally warmed up in the best way possible, a brisk 3k run back to warm drinks and - quite possibly - cake.

As Yazz once said "the only way is up" and that was certainly the case tonight. 22 spring legged runners met to tackle the hills of Redland to deliver leaflets for Above and Beyond promoting their Christmas parties and Bristol to Paris Bike ride.

We met at Vivo and warmed up with some leg spinning and introductions before breaking into two groups with Dave and Alice leading the front and myself and Clo the rear. Jacob Wells Road provided the main challenge with it's slow curving gradient rising like a genetically manipulated cobra uncoiling upwards to protect itself from the immanent danger of a oncoming gigantic mongoose wading through across the river towards it.

We reached the Godfather's car that was parked nearby and picked up the leaflets we were to deliver. These were distributed between the runners and then we took our two teams of 12 to separate parts of the area, Team Godfather to the West and Team Gazebo to the East. As if the hills were not enough most of the house in the area had steep steps too so the climbing just kept on coming. But this did not deter our hardy runners in red and they stepped up to the challenge and they certainly delivered a fantastic performance as every single leaflet was posted with time to spare.

They way back to Vivo was a breeze as it was all downhill. We met up in Queen Square where Dave's group arrived a little earlier so performed 3 types of lunge before my group came to meet them and stretch out.

Thanks for coming along everyone, I think that must have been a record for the number of leaflets delivered in on GoodGym but not having counted them we have no idea, but as we said let's just say it was one more than our last record hey.

See y'all again soon.