On the final Monday of the January Challenge, our 3rd birthday group run and my last ever night leading GoodGym York, an amazing group of 75 pitched up to do a stonking amount of good!

In that enormous group we had:

• THREE brand new runners - big cheers for Charlee, Thomas and Francisco.
• TEN GoodGym tourists from Newcastle, Ealing, Leeds, Bath and Portsmouth!
• TWO people celebrating their 50th good deed and donning the Cape of Good Deeds Give some hearty Yorkie cheers to Emma (who has been running with us for almost the three whole years but just likes to spread out all her good!), Rich and also to Louise who couldn't make it tonight but also did her 50th last week.
• TWO people celebrating their 100th good deed and swishing the Centurion Cape! (massive cheers please for Debs and Al who got their wings over the last few days.

We split into three running groups and a walking group, on a collective mission to transform the Nunnery Lane residential area.. with this list of mini and not-so-mini tasks to tackle:

1. Digging up topsoil, laying a weed membrane and covering a large border with pea shingle
2. The lamppost task (we'll come back to this)
3. Digging up deep set rubble from a community garden (saving the one young tree), taking all the rubble to a skip and laying a new layer of three tonnes of topsoil
4. Locating all the broken and rusty road signs within the area which need replacing
5. Building three raised beds and filling with 5 tonnes of topsoil
6. Edging the path in Scarcroft Green
7. Digging and raking up weeds and ivy roots from the Scarcroft Green border
8. Litter picking every street and snicket
9. Locate and mark on a map the locations of all graffiti on the estate
10. Levelling the area where we dug up elders last year ready for a spring seed sowing session!

The walking group were split into three sub groups to tackle tasks 2, 4 and 9. It took a while to figure out who was going to go with who due to lack of reading glasses. The lamppost task was absolutely the most complicated as appropriate lampposts needed to be identified according to a strict set of criteria, and marked as to whether or not they'd be suitable to display a neighbourhood watch sign.

So we're looking for dark lampposts that are approximately 2.2m tall?? - Paul

Leanne's group arrived at the Task 1 location (actually Task 5: raised beds) and Max was delighted to be able to use the IMPACT DRIVER, imagine a nail gun but for giant bolts and you won't be far off.

Then Mitch's team arrived and were split up to litter picking, community garden rubble clearing and adding extra people power for the raised beds.

Jenny, one of the three task owners, did more running than most of the GoodGymers as she went back and forth between the zones retreiving various tools from the van.

I need a boltcutter! Jenny

Then pea shingle team finished and moved onto Scarcroft Green, they were shortly joined by the litter picking squad and eventually the community garden team (though a few of those went up to help the raised bed team too).

We had a crazy ten minutes of raking, edging, digging, standing around having a chat, and frantically attempting to put all the tools back into the van. Then we only had five minutes remaining for the biggest, fastest game of Cones of Joy, ever.

It's a two lane motorway of circular running!!! Katie

There was just enough time for a gigantic group photo before the short run back to base. That truly was an enormous amount we achieved in about an hour.

Massive thanks to everyone who showed up tonight, or has showed up any time over the last three years. It really has been eggcellent and I think you're all the best.

Don't forget to do your lunges.

Haxby Road School Nursery's floor needs urgent repair and to this the classrooms need to be empty.

Along come a bunch of goodgymers to lend their muscles and shift lots of teeny furniture from the nursery into a temporary classroom.

Task was scheduled for 2 hours but we had it boshed in 35minutes!

Much bigger room to transfer on 31st so come along then if you can!

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon for a spot of benchmarking; a large scale city-wide project to create a fully updated resource showing the locations of 'age-friendly' benches (i.e. have arms and a back).

We met at Rowntree Park today and our mission was to complete benchmarking for a lot of the city parks which are locked up in the evenings.

Carl was chief map coordinator and everytime we do this task (this is the third one), there's a new work around to make it more efficient and organised.

Simon is a local orienteer and was looking forward to using his navigational skills to do some good. He and John completed the Westbank Park section and not only came back with all the bench data but with map corrections in general!

We'll have a huge evening benchmarking session on the evening of Wednesday 22nd to complete sections in the north of the city, so come and get invovled with the next round.

36 GG Yorkies ran to two big tasks where everyone had to dig and shovel a LOT.

This is probably the last time we can claim Amazing Aron as an official GG Yorkie, before he goes off to launch the biggest GoodGym EVER in Leeds. He'll always be an original though and a GG Yorkie at heart, I'm sure!

Aron was the boss tonight and kicked us off with a warm up before we split into two groups. Tremendous Tim led out the long run crew to Foxwood whilst Aron headed up the Rowntree Park team.

At Rowntree Park, our task was to top up the many play areas with fresh bark. The bark had been dumped in the car park in one enormous pile that covered four parking spaces.

As well as shoveling and wheelbarrowing bark, others were on hardcore forking duty, breaking up the compacted surface under the play equipment.

Top up everywhere where a child is likely to fall

I mean, those kids are pretty rogue, so we went with a very wide perimeter around each bit of play equipment.

The wheelbarrows were being filled in double quick time with everyone was switching between forking, raking, shoveling and wheelbarrowing to keep their muscles fresh.

Aron gave us a 5 minute countdown and it was impossible to clear all the bark so we were set the challenge of having only one parking space-worth of bark remaining. Easy!

With our task finished, we ran down to complete Aron's fitness challenge which was a team planking relay race with added burpees (man after my own heart).

Over in Foxwood, Tim led a surprisingly large group for the '7km' (definitely 8km - Tim) round trip to the community centre, where the task was to dig up some patches for planting wildflowers.

Tim's Report

After a long slog over the formidable Hob Moor, we found task owner Neil ready and raring to go. He led us to the far corner to a wonderfully pre-marked area for us to turn over the soil and make it ready for seed sowing.

We surprised him with our speedy and dutiful work and quickly had Herbie, Georgie and Amy pigeon/penguin footing the seeds into the freshly turned over soil.

The rest of the group furiously wrestled over the last tiny patch of soil, desperate to get involved.

%#€$ €#%*, it's raining

Max didn't take well to the light drizzle that hit mid-task.

They say %#€$ in the first Harry Potter book so it must be fine for the run report! - Also Max

As the space ran out, Amy took to regaling Ed with her penguin song which we very much look forward to at a future warm-up!!!

On the way back we executed an amazingly ordered Indian File. Expertly dodging cyclists, cows and renegade run leaders who step out into the sprinting lane! (Sorry Nicky!)

Til next week, be a good'un (and good luck for Leeds, Aron!)