An ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING 51 runners and walkers came along to our very first Monday group task of 2020!!

What a fantastic start to the year, we welcomed along Ian and Amy who joined us for the very first time, and a shout out to Steph too who joined us for her first group run.

It was also brilliant to see loads of old faces back with us and getting their own January Challenge off to a really GOOD start. Everyone was very excited to get a Yorkie bar for their first good deed of the year (love plying people with chocolate!).

With Debs as our walk leader and Pete bringing up the rear, we all headed over to Westbank Park where Kristina had reached a new level of organisational splendour.

We need 4 groups of 3, one group of 8, one group of 10 and then everyone else split into two

We thought the first run back might have a big turnout, and Kristina had produced a vast and dreamy task list which included:

• Bagging and moving grass cuttings from picnic area to top gate
• Sawing off 'too high' posts
• Turning compost in the new bins
• Sweeping and clearing the basketball court
• Topping up the dog grate with hardcore
• Thinning the overgrown bamboo area
• Coppicing hazel in the orchard
• (Re)building the dead hedge in the orchard with the (above) coppiced hazel
• Removing all "organic matter" from old compost bins to the new ones
• Deconstructing old compost bins and take all wood to bottom gate
• Clearing leaves from play area into compost bins

Once everyone had been briefed, we had all of about 32 minutes to complete all those tasks. Here are some short reports from those in the field....

Max: We moved three extremely smelly compost heaps 5m to the right

Leanne: We were asked to coppice hazel, use the cuttings to create a dead hedge and saw up some logs. We couldn't find the logs so concentrated on cutting down hazel and building an awesome dead hedge. Turned out we were supposed to cut some of the larger bits of tree but Kristina didn't care because our hedge was so amazing.

Nikki G (same task): We excelled at coppicing and dedge building. Actually genuinely skilled at it. Still in shock at our own level of skill.

Nick (still the same task): Alaya was incredibly good at finding flexible, whippy bits of hazel to weave into the hedge, such high quality.

Debs: I led our team pseudo-confidently to exactly where we needed to be. Our big pile of dead stuff to move proved to be elusive. We wrestled the smallish pile of prickly brambles into one of the two tonne bags. We dragged it up to the top gate and then split up to assist teams "gravel-gate", "bamboo pandas" and "Jeff's slimey leaves and poorly pigeon". Ellie, Katie and various Amys attempted to establish if it was gym equipment or play equipment in the park, we still don't know. (Egg: it's 'active play' equipment designed for children but absolutely suitable for small adults.)

Lizzie: We emptied compost from an old bin to new one. Then we dismantled the bin which involved Michael kicking it into submission. We shovelled a lot of really minging compost.

Katie: Amy, Chloe and I were joined by Jenna (who was important because she knew exactly where the basketball court was) and were laden with tools for the "heavy job". Armed with 3 tampers, 2 giant crowbars, a wheelbarrow and 2 shovels, we reached the cattle grid designed for (tiny) dogs and jimmied it off to scoop out the leaves from the watery pit. En route to collect to promised hardcore (for filling the pit), we also collected an enthusiastic Lionel who barrowed many heavy bags of hardcore. After the second trip it became clear (unlike the water under which the hardcore had now become completely submerged) that there was not quite enough hardcore to finish this item of task roulette. We called in David and Debs to assist with replacing the grid cover, leaving the puddley pit to be completely filled another day!

Although I don't have a direct quote from the play area leaf team, I can tell you that Christine and Louise were both massively excited to be in charge of leaf blowers and were fairly close to running home with them.

It was as slick as a military operation and all teams reported back bang on time, ready for a huge group picture. A small and speedy team led by Nick hung back to help Kristina put away millions of tools before catching the rest of us up.

To finish an amazing evening, the first workout of the year was a Team 500 workout, in which teams of about 10 shared 500 reps of squats and lunges to help celebrate Leanne and I both achieving our 500th good deeds. There was even a Mexican lunge in one of the teams which is probably my highlight of 2020 so far.

GOODGYM YORK FINISHED THE NEVER-ENDING FOOTPATH!!!

It's been over a year of hard graft; countless group runs, community missions and GG Yorkies joining the St Nicks Friday crew, but tonight we laid the last wheelbarrow of limestone on the footpath at Heworth Holme, it was momentous.

Joining us on this very special occasion were new runners Simon and Vicky, who bought into our excitement with great enthusiasm (give 'em a good old cheer).

We arrived at the pile of limestone and Mitch was loaded with a wheelbarrow faster than you could say "spade". The limestone 'pit-stop' was quite spectacular with wheelbarrows stopping in for less than 6 seconds to be filled with stone. In luls between wheelbarrows we even tried some loaded spade exercises including deadlifts, lunges and overhead presses.

We've found a short cut!

Would you believe it. Months after we started work here and we actually found a path that was both slightly shorter and a bit easier to get to the middle of the footpath. Wheelbarrows whizzed up and down whilst John and Val raked all the stone into place and new runner Simon was in charge of compressing the loose stone with a tamper.

With the last few wheelbarrows lined up, we gathered together to witness the final stones being tipped on. Definitely missed out on the opportunity to pop a champagne cork but there was no time for that because we had to run all the tools back to the top of the path before completing a victory run across our whole new beautiful and complete limestone footpath.

Three laps of the new bit, fast feet!

On Simon's suggestion, we did three little loops of the new section with fast feet, bunny hopping and stomping to really bed it in. We then ran onto Glen Gardens for a mini-sprints fitness session and a variety of exercises:

• Squat Jumps
• Press-ups
• Jump lunges
• Mountain Climbers
• Explosive Jacks
• Going down the slide (optional)

After we stretched out, Jonathan of St Nicks joined us at the pub with various tins of cake to help us celebrate the completion of the footpath. There was even really posh stuff like gin & lime cake and apple sourdough cake!

The end of an era. It's been emotional. 'Til next week!

Two teams of GG Yorkies (and a special guest GG Bristolian) ran to two tasks and did a whole load of good!

We welcomed along Suzanne, a brand new runner to the crew and we also gave a hearty welcome to Matt who was touring all the way from Bristol, and had even offered to back mark for us - what a hero.

Next up we celebrated BRILLIANT BECKY who not only ran her 100th parkrun at the weekend but followed it with her* first ever* Marathon in Newport, boshing her goal time too. She'd also decided to run from work, and do the longer run.. bonkers.

Finally we gave a huge cheer to MARVELOUS MADDY who was running her 50th good deed and was knighted with the Cape of Good Deeds (see fabulous picture of Maddy being a goody superhero with err.. a trolley).

I led one team to a final Monday night task at Spark, which finally launched this week, whilst Nick led out the other team to Clifton Backies for some scything, raking and wildflower planting.

Now I could tell you a million funny stories from Spark because it was an all- action kinda night. We were on a massive clear up and move stuff mission and let me tell you, there was a lot of stuff to clear up and move.

• Move all the pallets and stack them neatly behind a container
• Move all the scaffolding bits and bobs to the secret door area
• Move all good bits of scrap wood to the secret door area and stack neatly under container
• Move all cardboard to the skip and condense as much as possible
• Spade rubble into rubble sacks
• Move all the bark to the little garden area
• Find anything that looks like it is rubbish and put in the skip (cue Aidan doing an excellent job of 'making space')
• Lift two enormous bags of rubble and move to the other end
• Shift 7 gigantic wooden sleepers
• Sweep up

Phew. It was a lot. There was excellent team work a-plenty as we moved heavy items and made human chains. Maddy pranced in her cape, Lizzie made a beautifully swept pile of rubbish only to see it blow away in a stiff northerly gust and John was enjoying a few bicep curls with scaffolding offcuts.

Ian was on superb form, firstly teaching Ellie the names of each individual bit of scaffold and then showing off amazing trumpeting skills with offcuts of plastic pipe to raucous applause. You'll also see from the pictures that we acquired a GoodGym Native American mascot. It was a truly epic 50 minutes!

Standby for Nick's Clifton Backies report...

To SPARK & Backies AGAIN #2

A team of 20 joined me to navigate 3.5 km across town to the Clifton Backies nature reserve. Matt bravely took on back marker despite visiting from Bristol (Thanks Matt), but it was York local Leanne who went rogue and arrived via a route of her own devising.

We met up with Jonathan and Becky from St Nicks and soon split into three teams. Five jumped onto the scythes to clear areas of tall vegetation supported by a large crew of rakers and the more creative folk got to work planting out plant plugs.

Paul almost scythed a frog (no harm done) and Jonathan had enough confidence to let us sharpen our scythes! Brave fellow! Very quickly the whole area was cleared and ahead of schedule too so it was time to clear up - which left more time for fitness!

Evil Egg had left nothing to chance and Nick and Leanne deciphered her instructions to lead a set of Lovely Lungey Pyramids followed by 4 sets of Super Squats - a grand total of 56 lunges and 72 squats of various types!

We weren't quite sure what a 'lunge to knee balance' was but made up something convincing before we all trotted back to base where Shelley weirdly got all excited when she found out she could do some press ups as part of the warm down - strange girl.

A lovely crowd of 26 (including two slightly late ones) ran to two tasks to do good all over the city.

We gave run leader Nick a massive cheer to celebrate his London Marathon success and also welcomed along new runner, Hannah, to the gang. Not only that but we gave a hearty cheer to Alex and Nina who were visiting all the way from London. Finally, we gave the wonderful Taskforce Tim a huge cheer as he donned the Cape of Good Deeds for completing 50 good deeds last week. He wore it all the way in, so if you thought you might have seen a superhero running down Hull Road this evening, that'll have been Tim.

Paul and I led out two groups to Fishponds Wood and arrived there about the same time, except I had unfortunately lost half of my group.

I followed some random people in red t-shirts down a side street - Leanne

It's easily done, so once we had reunited the group, we cracked on with raking up arisings and moving them on a giant blue tarp to another area. It didn't take long, but fortunately Kristina - who is now very well clued up on GoodGym - had plenty of other jobs for us to get on with. Next up, rubble and lopping.

It's like the crystal maze in here, we're now entering the rubble zone!

Most of the group headed over to clear some rubble whilst we stupidly left a small crew (including Tim) lopping some overhanging branches off a tree. We returned ten minutes later to find the lopping had been fairly extreme.

You don't have to get it all down, it's a wood! - Kristina

Everybody chipped in to gather the enormous pile of almost a whole tree onto the tarp, and we dragged it to the top end. Job done.

Spark Report by Nick

Tonight our team headed back to SPARK York to continue where we left off last week - a short jog later we met up with Ellie B and Lizzie at the project and Tom from SPARK dished out the tasks.

The first job was rolling out metal fencing mesh so that we could provide edge protection to the scaffold handrails on the upper decks. We had an unroll and pull team, a cable tie team and a snipping team all working in unison. Barbara asked Lizzie to be her bit holder, and some people though she'd asked Lizzie to be her bitch. Either way, Lizzie obliged.

Mel was asked if she felt strong.

My arms are screaming no but my mind says okay!

Before we knew where we were, she and Ellie B were chucking pallets up the stairs with vigour.

15 minutes and 20 metres later we were all done. We did some light lunging to keep warm while some of the others moved and painted pallets, others moved and stored corrugated roofing sheets and then we all relocated some new planters. Job done!

There was just enough time to hold a lunge for a group pic and then we trotted back to find everyone else on the floor doing core exercises. We nearly left and went straight to the pub but decided we best join in.

On the first warm and sunny evening of 2018, a crazy large group of 51 GG Yorkies ran to a fabulous new project in York

We gave a big round of applause to our new runners and screamed wildly for Tim, who ran outstandingly well at Brighton Marathon yesterday. Not only did he run a marathon but it was also his 50th good deed so make sure you go and give him a massive cheer. Now, I was Bad Egg this week and had completely forgotten the Cape of Good Deeds (Leanne said it must be to do with being a new mum, having 'puppy brain') so I sent an emergency message to have the cape delivered to the pub for afterwards - more on that later.

We had three groups running to Spark: York this evening. A long run group lead by Paul and back-marked by Leanne, a short group run led by me and back-marked by Tim, and a power walking group led by Ellie and back-marked by Christine.

The Spark: York project is a fabulous enterprise using containers to enable small business, charities and community groups to have a space they can use (and afford). One of these brilliant projects is York Nurturing Community, whose café will provide allergy-aware, hot meals prepared with intercepted surplus and donated food on a Pay-As-You-Feel basis. Emily from YNC was the person who asked us along to help out and she had a big old job list for us!

It's my first GoodGym run and I'm the first at the task! - Rosie

The short run and walk group arrived almost together, and once we were hi-vised up we set about the following:

• Clearing a ditch of rubble into a skip
• Painting the ceiling of the YNC container
• Wire brushing pipes ready for painting
• Clearing wood from one container to another
• Sanding down some upcycled furniture
• Clearing out all the rubbish from another container
• Varnishing a mosaic which had been lovingly made by children with disabilities

Phew. Whilst everyone was getting on with those jobs, the second run group turned up and were tasked with cleaning every window and glass door, as well as sweeping everywhere. We also had to move lots of various items to different locations. If you took a moment and just watched the action from above, it was quite a sight. Hi-vis scurrying all over the place like little ants.

Leanne and Tim managed to baggsy the job of fireproofing one of the containers. It involved wearing one rubber glove each, donning a mask and hand-spraying clear liquid all over the wooden surface. Unfortunately, Tim's mask broke so he had to keep going to the door, taking a deep breath and running back in.

It's basically like diving - Tim

The final massive job was to shift two tonne sacks of sand across the site where it would form the foundations of another area. With only one wheelbarrow, people were grabbing buckets, cardboard boxes, pots and pretty much any recepticle they could find to fill with sand and take across. Once the bags were half empty, big teams of super strong GoodGymers were dragging them over and tipping them in. It was a spectacle.

We finished up with a thank you from the team, and I was delighted that they joined in with our workout - a GoodGym version of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.. which - you guessed it - included squats and lunges.

Mel, Ellie and Rob did an amazing job of repacking the hi-vis vests into size order and the heroic Ellie carried them back to base with the walkers.

I'm like hi-vis Santa! - Ellie B

After a team stretch out, some of us headed to the pub and Tim finally got to wear his cape with pride. There was some excellent posing with a pint and he shall run victoriously next week, with the cape blowing in the breeze. Don't miss out on that.. you can sign up here.

I leave you with a terrifying (but real) quote from our own GG Danger Man, Tim.

So, I think I'm probably fireproof too now, after all the spraying. Who's got a lighter?