On the last big group run of our January Challenge, a huge crowd gathered to complete THREE tasks in Rowntree Park

It was a night of celebration (as always) with so many massive milestones being achieved over the weekend.

• Craig completed his 50th good deed
• Mel and Christine both completed their 100th good deed
• Leanne completed her 300th good deed

Absolutely amazing stuff, make sure you go and give them all a well-deserved cheer. Craig got to wear the Cape of Good Deeds and Christine got to wear the Centurion Cape on tonight's run, and Christine couldn't resist a pout every time anyone asked her to pose, she was also our back-marker and the cape made her even more visible than normal which was very handy in such an enormous group.

We welcomed loads of new runners tonight too, they probably all wondered if they were definitely in the right place once we began our 'follow the leader' warm up and Mitch started dad dancing.

On arrival at Rowntree Park we split into two groups, with one group coppicing a whole bank of trees and clearing all the bushy bits and blackthorn too. The second group were asked to cut a big hedge to 'head height'. Apparently it was about the height of Barbara's head, but Edward Twigs-for-hands got carried away and accidentally cut the hedge to the height of Barbara's head if she were to be standing in a large hole.

Well, it does look different!

The second group were also faced with a gigantic pile of woodchip, but fortunately only had to move enough of it to top up the area surrounding the small pond. Whilst all this was happening, a third group of five got summoned off to another task but this group was exclusively made up of new runners and nobody knows exactly what happened except that it involved forks and was a success.

The hedge cutting team were dragging a huge tarp filled with cuttings to a dumping area and the coppicing team had to drag giant, over-filled tonne sacks to the collection point whilst the rest of the team followed and picked up all the leftovers. We reconvened in the car park for a brilliant game of:

GoodGym Wacky Races!!

In five teams, we had a crazy car park relay race involving fabulous exercises.

• Bunny hops
• Skipping
• Sprints
• Frog jumps
• Hopping
• Dance-walking (think the style award has to go to Mel for being so balletic or team Moylett for their waltz)
• Walking lunges
• Duck walks
• Long jump squats
• Powerwalking

It was very lively with lots of enthusiastic cheering and a surprisingly limited amount of cheating, so I decided that everybody won.

There were three excellent cakes to choose from in the pub tonight including Huw's cinnamon buns, Vicky's caramel shortbread and a chocolate cake from Leanne - everyone really was a winner.

Keep your eyes peeled on the January Challenge Leaderboard - just three days remaining to stay on top!

A group of us met with Kristina again from York City Council behind a block of garages in Acomb. To our delight she had brought lots of tools including brand new shears and extendable loppers. Our task was to clear the back corner of greenery and smaller branches and clear debris from the ground. We were joined by Aron who we haven't seen in a while now he's emigrated to Leeds. Great to see you again Aron!

Our group soon got stuck into our tasks with much snipping, lopping, sawing, dragging and sweeping. Egg was on ground clearing duty whilst several of us got attacked by some quite thick brambles that had grown right up into the trees.

They look like spikey cucumbers - I said.
I'm not coming to your house for salad! - Ed

Even though they had been cut they resisted as they were so tangled but Vicky was not to be deterred and managed to pull down some sizeable branches and brambles without actually hitting anybody on the head (I'm sure)! I came up with the great idea of pulling the huge pile of cuttings/spiky brambles onto the flattened bags so we could drag it across to the dumping place. Ed was not convinced however and was soon proved right as he just ended up with a bag in his hand and the pile still where it was! We then just pulled the big pile across - simples!

I showed Vicky the "rake and roll" technique I've used on previous GG tasks, where basically you use the rake to roll the big pile of weeds/brambles to where you need them to go. The rolling action helps to keep everything together to avoid bits getting left behind. Lizzie then got stuck in helping me roll the piles across, before most of us helped with sweeping the newly discovered slabs. The very wide brooms were very effective.

After an hour some of us had to leave so we had a quick group photo in front of the transformed area and then left the rest continuing to tidy up for the last 10 minutes before some of them went on to the next mission!

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!

21 GoodGymers ran to Hull Road Park, including new starter Lisa, to finish putting limestone on the footpath from previous tasks (…déjà vu anybody?). However, the limestone wasn’t delivered so instead we split the group into two:

• One group were tasked with putting a tonne of sand on to the path instead of limestone
• The other group were tasked with trimming an overgrown bush and moving the branches to a pile on the other side of the park.

Both groups had an hour before their (not) surprise fitness session.

Those on the path were quickly on it and were busy raking, tamping and putting the sand down as neatly as possible. As there was only one tonne of sand, our efficient GG’ers made quick work of this.

The others also made a quick start on the bush. They were busy with lopping, sawing and cutting the branches. Whilst there was some discrepancy in height to begin with, the group managed to get a good even level, although some people may have been eager with the loppers in a few sections (looking at you Paul Kelly!).

After the task, everyone was ‘treated’ to a fitness session, to the dismay of some (especially Tim). The group jogged in a circle and I would pick someone to say a category of people (i.e. anyone who has been to GG for a year, people who have done over 100 good deeds etc.). Anyone who fit the criteria would then come to the centre of the circle so do a special exercise (e.g. lunges and press ups). Some categories were more popular than others (it turns out A LOT of people have been to France!), however everyone reacted enthusiastically to the exercises they were set:

The grounds cold…I’m not doing anymore - Nick

Thanks everyone for the hard work; we made good headway on the tasks and will easily finish them on Monday (…again, déjà vu).

On our first official group run of 2019 - a huge crowd turned up to help us build a footpath!

Originally we were supposed to have two tasks tonight, but we'd been too efficient last week and finished one already, so I'd already let Kristina know to bring a lot of wheelbarrows, and she did...along with a lot of spades, shovels and rakes too.

It was our very first night meeting at our new venue in the York CVS conference rooms at Priory Street Centre, taskforcers were on hand to point runners in the right direction including a few people who were brand new to GoodGym - give some big cheers to Gav, Isobel, Kirsty, Emma, Amy and Fazeh!

Ellie B led the walking crew off whilst Paul led our running warm up in the car park (which is a much better spot than warming up in an already very warm room!) and with Christine and Debs as our back markers, we headed off en masse to Hull Road Park.

On arrival we split into three teams, and the original plan was to have one team doing fitness whilst the other two worked - but Kristina had extra tasks to do so we had one team on digging, to expand the width of the current footpath, one team on limestone shoveling and barrowing, to drop limestone into the already widened path and the third team were pouring sand across the already limestoned areas to fill in all the cracks and gaps.

It was Fazeh's first ever time using a spade, serious life skills you get to learn at GoodGym..

Next time I think I'll Google how to dig beforehand

The father/daughter Griffin duo of Ellie and Nick were doing some amazing work trying to make the limestone easier to dig out of the giant sack. It was a bit like jump squats but whilst holding onto a corner of a very, very heavy bag. Surprisingly effective. Too effective, as it seemed to be no time at all before the limestone had all been dished out and the limestone team went over to help the digging team.

The sand team had already spread all the sand, even the bonus extra sand that was supposed to be for next week. So Tim took his team up to the courts to start their fitness session of sprints.

Meanwhile with hoardes of people on digging, that task got finished really quickly too. So we decided once the last bit of path was dug out, everyone would leave all the their tools, head up to do their fitness session and Tim's team could come back and clear everything away.

Nick and Paul led their teams through some drills before everyone was going for it on their mini sprints, working on high knees and using the arms. Those who didn't fancy sprints got to do wall sits, which they seemed to enjoy very much.

Remember another 4 tonnes of limestone is being delivered so we can go back on Wednesday to do more on the path, you can sign up for that community mission here.