Our 2nd ever official Monday Night Group Ride saw a fab turnout of 23 GoodGym Yorkies on a beautiful spring evening. We started off welcoming newcomer, Andy before a quick run through the weekend's achievements, which David absolutely smashing the challenging White Horse Marathon and the absent Rich completing the frankly ridiculous Fred Whitton Sportive. We'll let him off for deciding to rest his legs this evening!

Tonight's task was at Yearsley Grove Primary School, which is a good 4km or so away, so Nick led a perfectly punctual run out for about 5 or so people, whilst the rest of the group hopped onto 2 wheels and cycled to the task. We might need a bit of practice sticking together as a biker gang when we realised less people had arrived than we had set off with, but eventually everyone wad accounted for and the task could start

At Yearsley Grove, we met Amanda and Adele who gave us a run through of what was needed and set us off to work, with half the crew focused on a general garden tidy up and the other half helping caretaker Malcolm with starting to put together some new raised beds.

James S was soon getting stuck in with the sledgehammer and knocking in new posts for the raised beds, whilst everyone tackled the weeds that had built up across the garden. Full wheelbarrows of weeds were then being taken across the play area and dumped to the side out of the way.

Does stuff mean biscuits - Max

With the task getting towards completion and the GG crew having weeded every inch of the garden, there was a timely boost of cups of squash and chocolate biscuits, to give everyone a bit of energy before the fitness session

As Ed is still injured, the fitness course was perfectly modelled by Lucy who demonstrated the route which involved hopping on one foot, little jumps before a standing long jump, throwing a ball into a hoop type thing before a sprint race. 3 circuits of the course seemed to be enough yo keep everyone entertained and not too tired out for the run/ride home

And so to team tidy up at the Mela. New recruits joined Vicky and Jenna to pack it all away. There were no signs of flagging in the afternoon heat, with Vicky now the gazebo queen! The team dismantled gazebos, stacked away tables and chairs - and a random goose, carried gear to the car park and collected in the flags. Pete- our international man of mystery was breast of the situation! The Mela saw ten thousand visitors today. Bravo!

Today we started by celebrating some amazing milestones- Leanne doing 1200 good deeds, Amy doing 300 and Neil 50! They all wore their capes with pride!

We also congratulated David on running an amazing 50km ultra on Saturday (and still able to run tonight), and the many runners who did the Helmsley 10k. We also marveled at Rich cycling back from the lakes!

After naming and numbering off, and saying what we'd do to help the planet in honour of earth day tomorrow, we set off to the cemetery.

We were met by Clive and set to task clearing an area of brambles to make way for tree planting later in the year. After 45 mins of graft we'd made good progress and also uncovered some hidden graves.

To finish the session, the new discs of delight came out which involved doing lots of our favourite exercises. If your disc said hunt your team got to go hunting for eggs. Winners got a creme egg then we headed back to base. We promised Clive we'd be back soon to finish off so watch out for that task.

We met tonight for a social run to kick off the bank holiday weekend.

Everyone assembled in Poppleton and we welcomed new comer Louise who was visiting from London.

We set off at our different paces only to end up back together at the train crossing - quick photo opportunity- then back off again. All groups included the Knapton community woodland and the strava segment, with some records being broken.

We then trotted about the area in our three packs and met back at the White Horse pub for some delicious food and an evening of good company.

This week's group run marked the start of GoodGym's new Workout for Nature campaign in association with the WWF. Surprisingly, the campaign does not involve wearing lyrca underwear and pretending fight so we had to give that a miss this week. Instead it aims to get people to take part in physical activity to benefit local green spaces. With that in mind we made the short journey to West Bank Park to help turn their compost bins back into a usable resource.

When we arrived, a fleet of wheelbarrows was waiting, along with a selection of tools. We all initially paired off (not like that) and then split into two groups to attack the different compost bins around the park. A pleasing selection of tools was available enabling us to free-form various methods to break up the compost and get it into the barrows.

The waste compost was barrowed to a giant skip where Pete adopted the role of site foreman and marshaled tipping the waste so it would fill the skip safelt and evenly. Initial skip runs were literally runs but the weight of the compost was such that these soon slowed down to a more sensible pace. Team one kept things interesting and local chiropractors in business by pulling their loaded barrows up some steps. Team two played with a dog. Badly.

The task seemed to fly by, especially for me as for once I was leading and not doing it. We made a good dint in both the compost bins but there is plenty left to go at for next week.

After the task, we did an animal themed group exercise in the park which was honestly much simpler than everyone made it look. Wildlife box ticked we headed back to Priory Street to enjoy the novelty of a cool down in daylight.