🥳A whopping 31 excellent GoodGymmers gathered on a crisp and chilly January evening to celebrate GoodGym York's 5th birthday with a group run, fitness session and cake - the perfect combination, especially after a mega 5-task 5th birthday weekend 🎉

👋We were thrilled to welcome Antonia to her first group run, after she joined us for a community mission on Saturday.

🌟 We were also delighted to present Izzy with the 50 good deeds cape of glory. What a hero 🦸‍♀️

🏃‍♀️ 🚶‍♂️After a (slightly extended) warm up, we jogged/walked down to Rowntree Park where we met Jenny from the Council Environment team who had brought a van full of tools for various tasks tonight 🚚

💪We split into various teams with each group being assigned a task.

🌿Team Green Waste (catchy) were wheelbarrowing said green waste from a large pile to Team Tree-age. Many frogs were found and rescued during this task 🐸

🌳Team Tree-age (get it?!) were sorting the green waste into different piles, depending on the twiggy-ness of it 🌿

🍃Meanwhile, Team Lop had their work cut out, cutting back a very overgrown area. Huge kudos to Lizzie who did a sterling job holding the light so everyone could see what they were doing 💡

🌺Alongside all of that, Team Flowerbed were digging flowerbed to clear it of everything except trees and one particular plant. Craig and Huw had their work cut out with a particularly stubborn root but very impressively got it out🌱

📷After half an hour of hard work, a lot had been achieved and a sense of satisfaction (hopefully) pervaded all. After a group photo and transporting all the tools back to the van, we said farewell to our walking friends and did a fitness session. We split into teams and did some relays, firstly running and then skipping. Personally, I had a great time seeing the many, many different skipping techniques. Everyone did brilliantly and then it was time to run back to base and eat cake 🤤

🍰With a choice of brownies and caramel shortbread (or maybe both 😏), all the baked goods were quickly finished and it was time to head off.

🙌Thank you everyone for a truly excellent evening and don't forget that we've got plenty of tasks this week to help us to reach our target of 400 good deeds (and 10,000k distance) for the January Challenge. Will we make it?! See all of our upcoming sessions here and sign up to one or many to help us get there ☑️

Credit to Nick for the pun 😅

🥳 23 excellent GoodGymmers gathered for our first group run of 2022. After giving ourselves a pat on the back for an excellent start to the year with our multiple tasks this weekend, we got down to serious business. This week, our naming and numbering off was accompanied by tales of unusual gifts (inflatable cutlery or composting worms anyone?!) 🍴 🐛

🚶‍♀️🏃‍♂️We walked/ran the short hop to Rowntree Park where we were unaccompanied for our task tonight. We gathered our tools and set off on a bit of a trek across the park (in the dark 🔦) towards the wildlife area 🐸

🌳 Once there, we split into two teams - team barkchip and team loppers.

🥾 Team barkchip divided (and conquered) further into shovellers, wheelbarrowers and path-layers. Some impressive teamwork meant that two whole footpaths were covered in barkchip and we made a significant dent into the huge barkchip mound that had greeted us on our arrival at the park. Debs and Michael even did an extra job, distributing some of the barkchip around the base of stone newly planted trees 🌴

🦌 Meanwhile, team loppers were cutting back the wooded bit within the wildlife area. Apparently, a deer moved in there last year and made its home there so they're wanting to discourage future deer from mistaking it for a genuine woodland habitat. After some excellent lopping, said lopped foliage needed transporting a fair distance (basically, to the other side of the park) so extra pairs of hands (and legs) were recruited for that.

📸 After a lovely group photo on the (much-diminished) barkchip mound, we said farewell to our walking party and did the (poorly-named, by me) 12 squats of Christmas (there were only 3 squats, x10) 💪 Everyone did a great job amidst much hilarity (Mitch) before heading back to base.

Thank you for this evening everyone, we've made really great progress 👏

👍 And if you'd like to come back to Rowntree Park for more of the same (well, slightly different actually, because the jobs will be different), you can join us on Saturday morning at 10:15. We've got a starter session there and you can even walk/run there with us from the Knavesmire if you fancy doing York parkrun beforehand. It's also the perfect chance to introduce a friend to GoodGym so have a think and let anyone know who might be interested in trying a session with us 😁

Ten GG Yorkies met Steve the school caretaker at Clifton Green Primary School on a surprisingly mild afternoon for mid November. Steve gathered all the available tools (including a powerful looking strimmer which unfortunately we didn't need) and showed us where the rasperry canes were, at the side of a playing field at the back of the school. Ally shared her horticultual knowledge and advised us which canes should be taken back down to ground level (the dead-looking, twiggy ones) and which ones should just be trimmed (the ones that still had leaves and/or fruit). Barbara and Nick trimmed a spiky hawthorn hedge on the other side of the playing field and Nick bravely carried the pile of cuttings across the field to the large bin (luckily he had very thick gloves). He also did some impressive compacting by jumping on top of the cuttings in the waste bin. Laura got stuck in weeding in between the canes as well and soon, after much eating of raspberries (mostly Egg and Sarah - they must have been hungry!), the raspberry canes looked a lot neater and tidier. Hopefully this will mean the school children have a wonderful crop of raspberries next year!

Another fun filled weekend was had by York Goodgymers at Kielder.

It all began on Friday at the poshest bunkhouse and Bothy you’re likely to see. Good job really as the rain was relentless, although we still managed a BBQ. A few drinks then off to bed to our dorms. I was particularly entertained by Tristan giggling in his sleep!

Saturday morning saw a team head off to Hexham (Tyne Green) parkrun where apparently people were taking it easy to save their legs (Mitch who came first and Tristan not far behind!) Egg, Andy and Vic went off to Morpeth to bag the new Morpeth parkrun.

Following that was the first of the Kielder events run-bike-run with Egg competing in torrential rain. Many of us braved the rain to cheer her on! Great work Egg!

Saturday night was pasta party followed by an early night - all was quiet by 9.45!

Sunday morning all were up bright and early and off to either the marathon or half marathon start points for our races. Nick also joined in as a volunteer and lead bike for the half.

Everyone did amazingly! So many achievements it’s hard to remember them all! A few folk ran their first ever marathon or half marathon - Ed, Amy, Paul Kelly, Steve. For Max it was also his first ever race and what a way to start with an astonishing 3:38! pbs were also had by Andy in the marathon and Mitch in the half (who also came 4th!). Tristan whizzed past me on my 12th mile in the half to complete his full marathon in 7th place!

I’m sure there are other achievements I may have missed but to everyone - a huge well done and thank you for another great Goodgym adventure. Next one I’m planning on some sunshine!

Few of us, including me, were fresh from holiday and GoodGym hungry. Debs and Michael only just got back home from holiday in Wales and came to the group run before even unpacking. Thumbs up for dedication!

Ben, who arrived half way through the welcome briefing, was celebrating his 101 good deed and was rewarded with a round of applause and the honour to wear the cape of 100 good deeds throughout the task.

Ellie and Debs left slightly earlier, as they were walking to the task location and the rest of us went through a series of movements getting ready for the run (it included shoulder rolls, arm circles while walking, jog, high knees and jog again). With everyone warm and ready we departed to do some good.

Later conversation revealed that the walking group took the ‘normal route’ and crossed the road 6 times on the way to the task, while the running group took a slightly shorter route featuring a footbridge over the railway track and 7 road crossings.

I didn’t know that bridge existed – Ed

Some of us arrived at the park slightly earlier and helped Kristina, our host, with unpacking her van and segregating tools for particular tasks. Today’s tasks included continuing spreading soil from the mud mountains on nearby paths, trimming geraniums, bagging good to use compost, turning partially rotted compost and weeding around the edge of the newly created wildflower garden. Kristina was as always well prepared and knew exactly how many people were needed at each location. Some of the jobs sounded more exciting than others, but we promptly ( in a GoodGym way) organised ourselves to tasks and started working. We had approx. 35min to complete the jobs and time was flying quickly today. It was all going well until the compost bagging crew Michael, Craig, Stefan and Ed realised that they were bagging the wrong compost. Kristina pointed them in the direction where the good compost was and boys speedily started filling the bags with the right stuff.

The mud mountains crew Leanne, Egg, Katie, Ben, Paul, Debs and Ellie , although best equipped, was a little bit short on the human resources front.

We need more people to empty wheelbarrows – Leanne

I did help as much as I could by emptying one wheelbarrow before running to check on the wildflower garden team.

The wildflower garden is a new feature at the basketball court end of the park. It had a small wooden fence installed recently and some young hedging planted to protect the grass and wildflowers from being walked on. Barbara was busy here relocating some of the plants, while Carl skilfully operated the edging tool making it easy for Paul, Lizzie and Laura to remove the unnecessary turf and weeds to make space for the new plants.

Meanwhile, along the path in the rose garden Zinnie, Mitchell, David and Izzy used gardening shears to cut the vibrant geranium off the paved path making it slightly wider.

Finally at the other end of the park Cara, Max, Amy and Dom , who was also an official photographer and visited all locations to take photos of people at work, were busy turning compost in the play area composting bays. I think this and the geranium task were the two that were fully completed, while the mud mountains, compost bagging and wildflower garden will need revisiting in the future.

At the start of the task I asked everyone to meet me at 19:20 on the grass by the white goal posts for a fitness session. Leanne and Paul get a gold star for being very punctual. Others arrived just few minutes later, so a great timekeeping overall I must say. The fitness session was a game of crab football. Normal football rules applied (except the offside rule) however we were moving as crabs with foot and hands on the floor, chest facing the sky and our bottoms not touching the ground. We split up into four teams and played two simultaneous games. The team to score the highest number of goals was going to be the winning one, however with everyone having fun we did not really bothered that much. After 8, or 9 minutes of crazy crab football everyone was ready to walk and run back to the base. The running group took slightly longer route and we caught up with the walking group at the last traffic lights not far from our destination. A short stretch followed before some of us went home and some headed to the Ackhorne Pub for a spot of liquid refreshment.

Next week we are delivering newsletters across Foxwood. The location is 4km away from York CVS and we will have two groups running to the task. One group will run @ a pace around 7.5min/km and the other group slightly faster.

See you all next week, if not earlier!