A team of hardy GoodGymers defied Storm Isha to head out for another night of digging and weeding. We started the night by celebrating not one but two people hitting milestones, with Lyndseycompleting her 50th good deed and Martin doing his 100th. Great work guys 💪. There was also a round of applause for Max becoming the first person to complete the January challenge bingo (who'd have thought it!?!?) and for all those who completed the Brass Monkey half at the weekend including a big PB for Paul Kelly

We then split into two groups with Ed leading the run out to Heslington Lane for another night of soil inversion for the long stretch of soon-to-be wildflower verge. I have a feeling we're going to be back to this task quite a bit! Jamie, Anna and Stef started where we'd left off last Monday, whilst Jenna, Mitch Max and Lucy got to work slightly further down. The soil was a lot claggier (is that a word?) than our last outing in sub-zero conditions, so the going was somewhat slower and shoes a fair bit muddier. But we preserved and made good progress regardless.

Michal led the rest of the group out to another session at Holgate Community Garden. Here's what he had to say...

10Goodgymers departed from our meeting location, 12 were at the task and 6 came back. We never leave anyone behind…. I promise. On the way to the task we ran through some back alleys to Laura’s house where husband David was waiting for us with a selection of hoes, forks big and small, brooms and other gardening tools ready for the task in a wheelbarrow. From there it was a short walk to the play area/community garden where the task was to dig out weeds around the wooden play equipment frame in preparation for a layer of bark chippings - our next task.

After about 20min of light weeding and chatting we moved to the swing basked and raised bed for an inpromptu fitness circuit featuring swinging in the basket, pushing the basket swing, broom handling, log lifting, lunges, wide squats, star jumps, triceps dips, bench jump overs and incline push-ups. “Accurately” measured 40sec repetition of each exercise before moving to another was perfectly done by each and every one of the 12 goodgymers present. My watch said 9min50sec when I pressed the stop button making our maths spot on. Right?

After that dose of exercise we made our way back to CVS, had time to stretch, chat about GG badges and if you would re-mary your ex to get a GG badge - that is if there was such a badge, stretch more, more chat before the second group arrived. Apparently they were running late, but what do I know?