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.

GG Yorkies tackled 2 tasks on opposite sides of the city!

After welcoming two new runners to the gang, we did a lungey warm up and the sub-team of five speedy pants runners headed up by Paul and Nick, headed off on a 13km epic to deliver leaflets for OCAY in the Acomb area.

The rest of us ran to Heworth Holme to continue our massive project to create a new footpath. Last week, a small crew had helped out with finishing the border planks and lining the path with weed guard. Our task tonight was to start filling the path with stone from the enormous pile which had been dumped nearby.

The stone was heavy, both to dig and to carry around in wheelbarrows, so everyone took turns with the different jobs. One of the riskiest bits of the task was getting under the barrier/hurdle where the path met the pavement, Barbara did an amazing job of safeguarding everybody's heads and helping to lift the wheelbarrows over the lip as they scurried back and forth.

Under the liner, the ground was still very soft and it wasn't long before we had created a little trench. The only answer was to fill the wheelbarrows with fewer stones on each run which slowed progress. Still, the flow kept going with only a few lulls of waiting for wheelbarrows to return.

If you're waiting, try a power lunge!

There was a fair amount of obligatory lunge posing and overhead spade presses in between bouts of digging and wheelbarrowing. Ellie enjoyed standing atop the pile and loosening off the stones too.

Over in Acomb, new runner Nicky wasn't fazed by the hard run out but had discovered how bristly some letterboxes can be.

Couldn't believe how much it hurt my hands, had to put my gloves on to push them through!

Nick and Paul were highly organised with their leaflet dropping and kept the group working hard to deliver as many leaflets as possible. Fortunately on this occasion, nobody was scuppered by dogs or dodgy gates.

With 30m of path completed, our work at Heworth Holme was done for the evening and we had a gentle run back before completing a workout comprising:

• Star jumps
• Lateral lunges
• Lateral leaps
• Spotty dogs
• Prisoner forward lunges
• Two-footed leaps

....with all that leaping it was only Paul Kelly who leapt almost into the window and Jenna who jumped so hard she made herself fall over - true dedication that.

The leaflet crew arrived back sweaty and knackered after their massive run and scoffed some Jelly Babies before heading to the pub for a well earned beverage.