We had a great turn out at today's session with Melissa and Tim coming back after a while and James, Georgina and Alys joining for the first time to see what GoodGym is all about. Give them ALL a BIG cheer!

We assembled by the park pavilion where we were welcomed by Emma from the Hut and Iain from the Council, who supplied all the tools, and plants for the task. I took the opportunity to present those of us who took part in the RunWithPride last month with colourful medals and without further ado we split up into two teams and went to work at two separate locations of the park.

The compost team were Nikki, Rich, James, Liz, Jenna, Mel and Laura got busy using the pitchforks and shovels to take all of the compost out of the three sided leaf composters, turn it and return it. Somebody had put grass cuttings in them too so the first job was to remove those into dumpy bags. The team found that the pitchforks were much more effective in removing the leaves which were fairly compacted. Shovelling it back in was also quite back breaking work after a while. Rich was particularly good at it. They finished the first set of compost bins in 40 mins so moved onto the second set which they managed to dig out and replace the top half of before the end of the hour.

Meanwhile the dig team went to the Hut garden and with the use of mattocks and spades took care of the soil inversion task. Iain brought few Clematis and other climbing plants which Abi carefully untwined from their bamboo frames before planting by the pergola. In few years’ time they should provide some shade for people sat under the pergola and flower in white and purple over the summer months. In just under one hour the team managed to make the area designed to become wildflower garden ready for seeding and put all climbers in the soil.

At 19:30 we were all ready for the fitness bit. Today’s session aimed to help improve our running speed. Following the warm up we did a number of short sprints/brisk walks interspersed with recovery jogs/walks. A warm down stretch followed and few bits of info about forthcoming community missions and the group run next Monday was shared with the group.

Next Monday we will be meeting at York CVS for the first group run since March last year. Hurray!

The Hut's 6-hour fundraising danceathon was well underway when 6 GG Yorkies rocked up ready to lend our support. Strutting our stuff to PSY's Gangnam Style, we felt a little underdressed as our red and black GG t-shirts and running kit couldn't compare to the fluorescent outfits that the marathon dancers Emma and Jonny were sporting. Not to be detered, we busted out our best dance moves, and when they were finished, realised how big a task we'd signed up for, Laura commenting that 'we've only been going for six minutes and it feels like a long time'. We had a couple of ringers in our midst with Leanne strutting her best salsa moves, and Christine engaging in an epic Capoiera vs Breakdancing dance-off with Max. Of course it wouldn't be a proper Goodgym dance without a few exercises, and towards the end of the hour we had a round of Sally Squats. Several of the members and support workers at the Hut joined in, only realising half-way through how much longer the song feels when you have to hold a squat for half of it. With our hour up, and Jonny and Emma half-way through their danceathon, we left enthusiastic about one of our favourite tasks - Leanne even asked if they could organise one every half-term for us. With another 3 hours ahead of him, Jonny was a little too tired to commit to that!

For more information about how the Hut support people in York with mental health issues and learning disabilities, or to donate to support their expansion, check out their website https://www.thehutyork.co.uk/

We were asked by The Hut to deliver 200 leaflets promoting their charity. In typical GG fashion we managed to Bosh out all 200 leaflets in 10 minutes!

Quite frankly it was impressive that anybody showed up for tonight's run with howling gales and torrential rain, but 39 amazing people did!

We welcomed along first-timer Helen and gave some big cheers to everyone who ran the Brass Monkey yesterday, especially Debs who boshed her half marathon PB.

We also celebrated not one but TWO people who both did their 50th good deeds last week, give your best cheers to Jo and Amy, who took it in turns to wear the Cape of Good Deeds.

We kicked off with a warm up inspired by the Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans for Physical Fitness, before running off into the wet and puddley city.

Nick's speedy team headed off ahead as they had an extra mission to complete, Paul headed up the bark-chip moving team at Clarence Gardens and I took a squad to the boggy Greenfields Garden.

Our task was to release a row of eight compost bins from their brambly prison.

In Clarence Gardens, Paul's team were tasked with shifting a pile of bark to top up the footpath which leads to The Hut. There was also a sub-task to clear the leaf bays of soil and grass read for Nick's team to refill them.

Nick's team grabbed bags, rakes and leaf grabbers and headed off to the Bootham Rest Garden to clear up all the leaves. The main challenge was a) running safely with a rake and b) carrying very heavy bags of wet leaves back to Clarence Gardens to put in the leaf bays.

We ran back down Gillygate (mainly involving waiting at traffic lights) and skewered no one with our rakes. Nick

'Snow Pete and the seven dwarves' then got to work raking, scooping and bagging the leaves before realising the hardest bit was the run back. They carried them all the way back down Gillygate getting a massive strength workout into the bargain.

At Clarence Gardens, the new bark path was going well, Iain was keen for it to keep being topped up until the bark was all gone.

This path is eight feet wide and about as deep!

Leanne was leading the charge on laps of the (small) park to keep warm too, excellent stuff.

The bramble team cleared the whole area in 30 minutes, with Amy keeping warm with many repetitions of bramble barrowing too.

As Nick's team arrived back having wrestled with bags and tools, Loz decided that he was the most hardcore of the dwarves having carried three bags back (double bagging doesn't count, Loz!).

After running back we got ourselves super warm again with some of those Canadian Air Force exercises, doing sit ups, press ups and fast steps/squat jumps for time.

Amazing effort all round and high fives to every single one of you who braved the weather!

Even though it is now February and the January Challenge is over, a massive crew of GG Yorkies came to run and walk and do some good!

Oh yes, we finished the January Challenge on an absolutely amazing 704 good deeds - outstanding. The Golden Trowel will be making it's way up from Bristol so we can wave it around victoriously. We could have done with it tonight but I'll get to that shortly.

First of all we need to give a big warm welcome to our new runners, Charlotte and Patrick. Go and give them both a cheer!

Nick led a sub-team off for a quick 500 leaflet drop whilst the rest of us - led by Tim - made our way to Clarence Gardens. We arrived to a dreamy nine tonnes of soil and van load of tools. Some of the team cracked on with moving the soil to top up five flowerbeds full of roses, whilst the rest headed over to The Hut to lop up piles of branches into smaller pieces for bagging, and to finish digging the trench to aid with drainage around the building.

Team trench were uncovering all sorts of good stuff, including something they thought might be a pipe. Max said, "further (careful) excavation revealed it to be an empty tube labelled 'Scientific Grease'. I struggle to think that Max really did do careful excavation but the real question is: what is scientific grease?

It's just like normal grease, but.. for science

The soil team were on fire, it was a digging frenzy and bags were dragged away by pulling teams as soon as they'd been emptied by about two thirds.

Is anyone good at pulling?!

Just on time, Nick's leafleting team turned up to add some people power. There were plenty of tools for everyone but I still found Katie Kelly raking a flowerbed solo using a spade, she was happy so I left her to it.

We took some advice from Tom that roses don't really like being completely covered in soil so as more bags got emptied, any free hands were used to clear the soil around the base of the roses... and there were no trowels. So spades or hands it was.

Nikki didn't need a trowel. She was picking up soil with her bare hands and just throwing it at the flowerbeds, "quicker and more fun", apparently.

With all the soil moved, a trench dug, and all the brush cut into tiny pieces and bagged up, it was fitness time! We completed a short around the square of grass workout which involved:

• bench presses
• tricep dips
• sit squats
• bench burpees
• split squats
• sprint/jog/walk
• optional walking lunges

Then we squished in for a very well lit group photo before running or walking back to base.

GG Yorkie of the Month

After a stretch out we finally revealed the winner of our GG Yorkie of the Month for January.... it's the EXTRAORDINARILY good Ed Woollard!!

Ed did an enormous 30 good deeds in January, as well taking his taskforce responsibilities seriously and leading several community missions - massive well done Ed (give that man a cheer!)

22 GG Yorkies finished the last task of the January Challenge with a big multiple task followed by a huge social curry!

When we arrived, Iain was reversing his van. And out of the freezing fog a throng of GoodGymers appeared and scared him half to death.

We quickly spotted our first victim, a large hedge. Then we proceeded to cut the hedge to our own waist height.

Over by the perimeter of the hut we dug our spades into the mud to make a six foot deep trench.

Whilst some of us nearly fell backwards into the hedge whilst pulling up twigs rooted into the earth, others unearthed the not-so-shiny rare-spotted blue Monster can.

Tim, meanwhile, managed to remove some bricks but thankfully there was no great hut collapse... we edged further along the hut wall, being attacked by the bushes as we went, and found lots of tiles buried in the soil. There was some discussion about how big 6 inches was...

Alaya wrote no sentence.

Everyone agreed Tim is definitely the greatest runner ever! Tim, do we really think that?! yes we do! all credit to Tim that considers it ok to still be running in shorts despite it being well below freezing "well my knees are a bit cold " !

Apparently.

Some exciting stuff occurred including:

Chopping, lopping and sawing to "hip height" (precisely whose hips, who knows?), stick piling for brexit and the reemergence of the team tall team tiny divide. BUT THEN...

Tim called for extra help on the digging team. Leanne, whose fingers weren't getting any warmer from lopping jumped to attention... 5 minutes later a small voice was heard to be calling:

How do I get out of here?

I sat in Babs' car waiting for the curry. Caught a drink driver, is that an extra good deed?!

^DEFINITELY COUNTS.

With the hedge successfully cut down to the official unit of measurement of "a spade", some of the lopping crew joined the digging gang and got to work with spades....hacking ivy off a wall.

AND NOW TO FINISH OFF, A WORD FROM ED

There aint no party like a goodgym party!

Was it a mistake to let 22 GG Yorkies collectively write a run report? Possibly.. but most of those among many other have made this the GOODEST MONTH EVER, so a huge high five and well done to everybody who has run with us and made it so massive.