Guest Report: Written by Al Smith (Previous GG Yorkie and now Islington Turncoat)

On a scorchingly hot Easter weekend 30 GG Yorkies came to GoodGym just to witness my return to York. Only kidding; they all turned up to do loads of good like normal! I had managed to turn up just on time to celebrate Paul's 100th good deed so let's all give him a huge cheer for that!

I, alongside 23 good people, including newbies Anna and Rose, ran to Rowntree Park to clear the Lodge Garden of all overgrown foliage. With mattocks, pitchforks, spades and elbow grease we cleared 5 (count em’, 5!) tonne bags full of rubbish so it can become a propagating garden for all future plants to go into the park.

In the meantime 7 speedy runners did a few extra K’s to move 3 tonnes of soil to create some beautiful raised beds at Knavesmire Primary School. In fact, they were so quick that they even managed to get to Rowntree Park to help us with the end of our task.

And with that, everyone went home with a sense of fulfillment and only slightly hurty legs. Or that’s what would have happened if the incorrigible Egg wasn’t the trainer… Instead we did a MetaFit fitness session! This was a matrix of 4 exercises, for (a long) time, with (little) rest, including:

• Get ups
• Agility Sprints
• Kneel Ups
• (and finally some very fun) Commando Crawls!

Since Egg told everyone I’d requested this, (which I did) as the session continued, I got more and more angry looks. Luckily Yorkies are all fantastic people and harboured no ill will (and they all knew it was Egg’s fault anyway).

Thanks for welcoming me back so warmly guys, it was great to see so many friendly faces. If you’re ever in London, let me know and I’ll put the kettle on!

Another enormous group of GG Yorkies ran to finish off the Hull Road Park footpath!

It was only our second group run of the year and once again, we welcomed along a fabulous batch of brand new runners. Not only that but we had some massive celebrations as run leader Paul had run a huge PB at the Brass Monkey Half Marathon, 'Bad Jim' Max was running his 50th good deed and Aidan was running his 100th good deed! Max and Aidan donned their respective capes with pride as we headed out on our run - go and give 'em all a cheer for being so awesome.

Everyone was in for a treat as we had four tasks to complete:

• Digging and barrowing four tonnes of limestone onto our newly dug out path
• Widening one last section of path with spades
• Digging and barrowing three tonnes of sand (see note)
• Cutting a hedge about a foot shorter, so it was even with the one opposite

*Note; it wasn't sand. It was 'self-binding path gravel'.

Last week we definitely used sand.

When we said the sand couldn't possibly do anything, we were right! Max and Craig

Ellie B had come prepared. She had string. Her plan was to tie the string at the right height along the hedge to ensure everyone snipped a perfectly straight line, genius! After about 15 minutes of chopping and lopping, I noticed the string was hooked around a sticky out branch and definitely was not making a straight line. Team hack were doing an excellent job though, probably the straightest hedge I've ever seen without an electric hedge-trimmer in sight.

Leanne, Paul Kelly and Tom were on path-widening. This was quite a skilled task, actually anything requiring a straight line of any sort of quite a skilled task, especially in the dark. They were extremely meticulous and by the time they'd finished, the whole path was a perfect 1.2m wide, with the new edges quickly filled with limestone.

Team limestone were working hard. There were two great big piles to clear, just enough to finish the last of the footpath. Several big rocks were in amongst the piles and had to be extracted and transported to the edge of the beck.

The self-binding path gravel team originally did not believe they could clear their many bags. As the piles were dropped on top of all the limestone, a squad of rakers, tampers and stompers ensured the path was all compressed with a perfect camber. The gravel was cleared it with a massive 10 minutes to spare, giving the team extra time for stomping to really bed it all in.

With all the limestone and gravel cleared, we took all the tools back to the store and finished off with a STOMP-TASTIC exit along our new footpath. We gave a whole new meaning to "functional fitness" as we used a few different exercises to stomp down the gravel as much as possible.

It's like a GoodGym army! - Issy

We stomped, bounced, lunged, bunny-hopped and high-knee'd our way out of the park, all on our lovely new footpath.

Next Monday - join us for a run to Heworth Holme where you can enjoy the footpath we built last year, yay!