48 GG Yorkies took on two truly enormous tasks!

I put out a call to action today after speaking to Iain who was heading up our task at Clarence Gardens; originally a task to shift five tonnes of soil. There was a bit more soil than expected, not double, not triple.. not even quadruple but a gargantuan 22 tonnes. It wasn't even our only task, we still had a second task to complete and that was a massive one too - we'll come to that later.

There was so much to celebrate with massive weekend marathon victories from Loz and Tristan as well as a cheeky half marathon PB from Georgie. As well as all the running, we gave massive cheers to Brilliant Babs who was running her 200th good deed tonight, an absolutely amazing achievement. Go and give them all a big cheer!

Leanne and Ed were our walking crew tonight whilst Becky led the main bulk of the runners to Clarence Gardens for the epic soil moving task. 22 tonnes really is a lot of soil. Each bag had to be shovelled out about halfway before the rest could be dragged to it's final destination.

You need gloves if you're going to be part of the drag queens!

Meanwhile a smaller crew headed out on a longer run to New Earswick Bowls Club where we were met by Greg and a few other chaps. Our task was to lay the summer sports floor, which is basically around 180 large wooden tongue and groove planks. The planks were in storage and had to be taken across the car park and slotted into position. Each plank had to be 'jumped' into place to ensure it was flush - and Katie was definitely the jumping boss.

The crux of the task was that at the end of each row, a piece had to be cut to the right length before we could start the next row and we had all the planks inside and lined up when our time ran out (but don't worry, we're going to go back tomorrow and you can join our community mission to help us finish it!).

The soil moving crew cleared a record-breaking 17 tonnes of soil before their time ran out. But they did have just enough time for our cape-based fitness session which involved lots of exercises to either crawl under the cape or leap over it - check out the fantastic pics!

On the first light evening of 2019, an absolutely massive crew turned up to do some good!

Our team included three brand new runners, a surprisingly unbroken Nikki (even after running a casual 65km over the weekend), a very happy Craig who beat his 5k PB again at the weekend, breaking that 20-minute barrier AND of course, the GG Yorkie of the Month for March.

The accolade for March goes to Christine who did loads of community missions in March, also wrote loads of run reports and takes fantastic photos for us regularly, well done Christine!

We sent a speedy crew of of ten blokes and a Jessie (led by Paul) off to a bonus task of planting lavender on the bank in Clifton, whilst the rest of us headed over to Fishergate School for a whole list of tasks in their outside forest school area.

The task list at Fishergate included:

• weaving willow into the igloo shelter
• weaving willow into the fence
• weeding the raised beds
• weeding the bases of all the hedgerow trees
• excavating an old brick fire pit

The excavation was actually quite exciting. On first glance, the 'fire pit' was just a flat muddy area, but as the team scraped away, a circle of bricks emerged.

I feel like we are time team! - Helen

Over at the raised beds, Lucy had ended up with what was definitely the smallest trowel that has ever been manufactured. Still effective.

Huw, Ben and Simon were really chuffed because they'd bagged another task which involved digging a big hole. There isn't a GoodGymer out there who doesn't love a good bit of hole-digging. The hole they dug was 100% big enough for the quite small tree which had to go in it. Some might say 200%, either way they were all very happy.

The speedy crew made it to Clifton in double quick time and got to work planting 45 lavender plants in amongst the daffodils on the steep bank. Craig had forgotten his gloves so borrowed a pair from the pile. He gleefully handed them back once the task was over, proclaiming them to be the comfiest garden gloves he'd ever worn.

Those are my cycling gloves - Kay, task owner.

After just 40 minutes, we'd finished the whole Fishergate task list and new runner Lionel finished beautifying the fire pit by washing away the last of the dirt was a bucket of water. It was an amazing transformation. There was some chat about igloo weavers stealing willow from fence weavers but all rumours were unfounded.

We celebrated a great evening of tasks and the lovely light, sunny evening with the super duper Cones of Joy!! Paul's team got back just in time to join us and it was fitness mayhem as people lunged, planked, can-can-kicked, ran in circles and did extreme cheering from the cheering station.

I was paired with Stef, he just kept running so I had to do all the exercises - Craig (lucky)

Pun credit - Tim (excellent work)

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!

Another two-task Monday for the GG Yorkies!

It had been a weekend of brilliant running with 5k parkrun PBs happening all over the place, half marathon PBs at Harewood House, 30k epics and mountain adventures, but that didn't stop Paul leading one group on a huge 10k run to Rawcliffe Bar Country Park whilst Becky led a 5.5km group to Heworth Holme.

We welcomed along a new runner John, husband of GG Yorkie Lauren. He thought he'd sensibly picked the shorter route but had worn shiny clean trainers and nobody had told him that the shorter run always has a longer fitness session...

At Rawcliffe Bar, the task was to continue digging up hardcore from the spot we'd previously removed the wetpour from. The hardcore needed to be shifted under three benches in the play area, but first the ground needed to be lined with weedguard.

Carl was on hand to cut the membrane very precisely and was busy comparing the leg length of the different benches, which didn't really impact on the membrane cutting whatsoever, but it's always nice to know the different heights of benches anyway.

At Heworth Holme, half the group were tasked with digging up and bagging soil from mounds which had been formed from the creation of wildlife scrapes. After Bec quickly discovered that you definitely don't want to step in the scrapes because they're extremely boggy, it only took the team about ten minutes to fill all the bags.

We need more bags!

Luckily the other half of the group had stolen some bags which they didn't need. They were tasked with digging more wildlife scrapes and err... making more mounds of soil.

Is this another task which Jonathan has just made up?!

The wildlife scrapes and wetland area will be amazing once finished, but it's a process and the digging and bagging will continue for a while. With every blue bag in sight filled, the bagging team shifted all the bags to the entrance and started helping with the scrapes. Helen gave a handy explanation of the task:

Gotta dig this sludge, put it over there

We waited until everyone had really, really dirty and wet feet before finishing up and running back to base, where a little core session followed.

I LOVE mountain climbers (possibly sarcastic Leanne)

We grabbed all the long run team's bags and transported them to the pub ready for collection. Huw had made some lovely flapjack and we even saved them some of that too. They weren't too far behind us though and Paul Kelly's summary when I asked how it was said it all.

It was hardcore.

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!)

28 GG Yorkies ran to complete two different tasks in York!

But before we did that, we gave a massive cheer to taskforcer and run-leader-to-be, Marvellous Mitch who completed his 50th good deed at the weekend and was awarded the Cape of Good Deeds to run in. Go and give him a big cheer, or give him three cheers and get closer to that mythical '3, 2, 1' badge.

We had to skip GG Yorkie of the Month because November's winner was absent.. could it be you?! Find out next week!

Becky led out the Hull Road Park group, our third visit to the park to reinstate the former footpath across the bottom field. The first challenge was carrying five wheelbarrows full of tools down the steps whilst avoiding the puddle, and then the main task was to:

• dig out the turf to find the old wooden path edges (which were hidden)
• dig out a layer of soil and make the path as flat as possible
• put all dug up soil and grass into wheebarrows and dump it at the side
• fill up wheelbarrows with hardcore from the far end of the path
• decant hardcore onto new, wide path
• rake out hardcore into a good camber (higher in the middle, lower at the edges)
• bang down hardcore with a tamper

Before we started all of that, we tried to find the lines that Kristina had made which showed where the edge of the path was supposed to be. It wasn't easy because it was dark and muddy and the lines were made last week.. so we gave up with that and just guessed. There were little squeals of joy when we came across the buried wooden boards and knew we were in the right place.

Of course some people had gotten a bit too carried away and had gone much too wide, so re-turfing was added to the task-list.

Zoe meticulously put the seven floodlights out to give the best possible lighting (after spending a longer than average time figuring out how to unfold them) and was then a wheelbarrow warrior, bringing several loads to the raking and tamping crew.

It's like crunchy cake icing!

Ellie B never stops thinking about cake, ever.

With five minutes left on the clock we shut down the digging operations and put everyone onto gathering hardcore or raking it in, and we finished with another good chunk of footpath completed.

Going back, Becky developed some sort of superhero strength and just casually picked up a wheelbarrow full of spades and single-handedly carried it up the stairs like it was nothing. Then we celebrated another good deed with a mini-step rep circuit with squats, single leg squats, split squats and walking lunges, yay!

Split squat!? This is just another lunge! - Furious Ellie B

Leanne's group of nine nimble GG Yorkies, ran to Clifton to meet Kay who had a barrow-full of daffodil bulbs for us to plant on some steep grassy banks.

We were a few tools short for the size of the group, not helped by the fact that Max immediately broke a trowel... even so, everyone quickly found something to do when Leanne offered the possibility of step reps for anyone who was at a loose end. Within 10 minutes, Kay had managed to borrow a few spades from a neighbour so we could increase our productivity.

When Kay got her phone out to take a photo for her newsletter, Tristan offered to turn around so she wasn't taking a photo of his bottom.

No, I like it like that! - Kay

40 minutes later, with most of the bulbs in the ground, we gathered for our group photo and fitness session. Except for Max who seemed have far too much energy to stick around and listen to instructions.

The group were asked to do a relay in pairs with one partner doing step reps while the other completed a loop, taking in the hill leading up to the top of the steps, then swapping over. As Max sprinted off into the distance, he shouted:

Whoever hasn't got a partner is with me!

Then it was back to base where Tim tested his new Leadership in Running Fitness qualification by leading the cool down.