A mammoth crew including four new runners came along for another two-task night at GoodGym York

We celebrated a massive weekend of racing with new parkrun PBs, new 10 mile PBs and completion of the English Cross Country National Championships - phew!

Mitch led out the 10km crew for a final hurrah at Rawcliffe whist I led the 4km crew to New Walk for a bench cleaning and path-widening challenge. Craig and Tim were our back-markers today, thanks chaps.

We arrived at the start of New Walk to be met by Win, with lots of buckets of soapy water and a few spades. Those who were logging their run wondered where the remaining kilometres were going to come from since it had only been 1km to the start.

It's the bench cleaning relay!

Working in pairs, runners took turn to either scrub the really mucky benches or scrape back the edges of the cycle path, whilst their partner walked, ran or sprinted to Blue Bridge and back. They swapped continuously for 15 minutes, before I switched the running bit to 20 squats, and then 10 lunges.

Lunges? How? It's my first time

Yes that's right. It was a momentous occasion for Jessie doing her first ever lunges and we made sure she had the technique nailed with perfectly angled knees and everything. Nick was going rogue with side lunges and Leanne was practising her balance by lunging down the white line in the middle of the cycle path. Lots of people stopped to ask what on earth we were up to and one man just spontaneously burst into lunges.

Mitch's team ran 5km along the Ouse and arrived at Rawcliffe to finish off the giant task of filling in the wetpour hole. They were tasked with filling the old hardcore site with 7 tonnes of soil; which will then be reseeded so there is full grass cover. In usual GG fashion, they dug out as much soil as possible until the bags were ‘draggable', then hauled them across to tip them out.

Ed apparently tried to start a rave with the music from the nearby fitness session (not ours) and started to dance but Emily was the only one who joined in with him, gutted. The task was finished quickly and the team boshed back along the river.

Last person to finish the run buys the round! - Craig, before realising he was the back marker

With the benches seriously cleaned up and hundreds of metres of cycle path widened, our work was done.

It's a trick, there's more fitness

Oh yes, we still had a few circuits to do in Tower Gardens:

• high steps
• skipping
• sprints
• elbow to knee walk/jog (Amy's choice)
• mountain climbers
• tricep dips
• press ups

..and with all that done, we headed back for a rest!

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!)

On GG York's 2nd birthday, a big crew rocked up to run, get fit, dig clay and celebrate!

We were joined by two brand new runners, so let's give some big ol' Yorkie cheers to Amy and Savannah. Also worth a cheer, team Beningbrough who collectively clocked something like 240km yesterday for the January Challenge, nice one.

Extraordinary Ed ran his 22nd good deed in 21 days and also got to wear the Cape of Good Deeds as he did his 50th on Friday, whilst Jolly Jenna was running her 50th tonight, and got to wear the cape on the way back. Make sure you give them both some cheers too, 50 good deeds is a brilliant achievement.

After a bunched up warm up (even a car park isn't enough space for us), we headed off for Heworth Holme - where our task was to dig up lots of lovely clay, bag it in heavy duty blue rubble bags and carry it a couple of hundred metres to the end of the path. The clay is to be used to create a new wetlands area at St Nick's Nature Reserve.

The hardest part of the task was figuring out what was soil and what was clay. The clay was much firmer than the soil and could be dug out in blocks. Some people were poking it to see if it felt clay-like whilst others just dug massive holes and took whatever was deepest.

It didn't take very long for us to fill every single bag (around 40), so with a bit of time to spare, we kept digging more holes to make 'wildlife scrapes', which are temporary ponds for wetland wildlife.

After the task we ran over to our favourite birthday workout spot, Morrisons Tower. We had a speedy mini circuit session including all of these treats:

• walking lunges
• sprint circuit
• sit squats
• press ups
• tricep dips
• single leg sits
• mountain climbers

Love the lunges, it's a bit like stretching! (new member Savannah, already my favourite)

We ran back, enjoying the climb of Micklegate Cobbles and then celebrated our birthday with a beautiful bit of cake made by Vicky.

If you want to join us tomorrow to empty out all those bags of clay and get mucky compressing them into the base of a pond - you can sign up here.

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!