Today's group run took an antipodean theme as we numbered off by stating our favourite things about Australia, featuring Koalas, crocodiles and a bit of Kylie. We also welcomed back Craig (aka Daddy Haggart) for his first group run in 2 years. Give him a big cheer! 💪

There was also a PB to celebrate with Debs smashing out her fastest ever 5k at the weekend 👏. And a milestone achievement with Stefan completing his 250th Good Deed early in the week. Well done guys.

We set off with Ed leading and Nikki and Amy backmarking, shortly arriving at West Bank Park to be greeting by Christine from the City of York Council environment team. Whilst waiting for Christine to finish unloading her van we had a quick round of Mexican wave star jumps, taking at least 3 attempts to make it all the way round!

The task itself involved us splitting into 3 groups. Team 1 were in charge of filling up a water butt over by the wildlife pond. Team 2 were tasked with restoring a soil area by the pergolas that had suffered from grass-creep. And team 3 helped Christine pack away some tools before turning over the compost area in the play park.

Team 1 dived straight in (not literally) and soon got into a rhythm of running water between the tap and the butt, even if they weren't entirely sure why.

Team 2 debated over exactly what edge they were restoring but soon made excellent progress, and made some clearly defined, if not straight, lines with their edging tools.

Team 3 made light work of the compost bins and started to look for additional work, with Max getting very engrossed in his benchmarking app! But before too long they were back at it with bags to fill with compost and some DIY to do to help keep the compost bins stable.

With time running out team 1 joined forces with team 2 to help them get tidy before it was time to wrap things up and get stuck into tonight's fitness sesh.

The fitness session loosely involved some core strength exercises, but was really just an excuse to make use of the dry weather to get people crawling around on the ground. Teams of 3 would alternate between going under and over their team mates in a race. As Ed was needed to help make up the numbers he was assured that there would be no cheating!

A fab session in the sunshine with lots of work done. Well done all

🌆We met for our group run at dusk on a lovely Monday, still in a bit of light, which was greatly appreciated.

👋We were thrilled to welcome Martha and Dan for their first GoodGym session.

☘️We had an Irish-themed (for St Patrick's Day) naming and numbering tonight where we found that lots of us enjoy Irish food and beverages, and Irish people too. We then did a quick warm up and walked/ran to Rowntree Park 👍

⚡On arriving at the park, we spotted a GoodGym t shirt running past at lightning speed. On (eventually) catching up with them, I discovered it was Rob, the Area Activator for GoodGym Solihull who's visiting York at the moment. Although he wasn't able to join us tonight, we hope to see him again soon 🥳

🌊We were met at Rowntree by Kristina from the Council (and Michal and Rachel) who explained what we needed to do. Friends of Rowntree Park are hoping to be able to reopen the park on Wednesday but needed some help to be able to do that. We were therefore tasked with clearing the paths that the street sweepers weren't able to get to. Armed with brooms, leaf blowers, shovels and rakes, we quickly set to work, dividing and conquering to tackle all corners of the park 💪

🦸‍♀️🦸‍♂️After half an hour, we'd cleared lots of paths and made lots of areas more accessible. Oh, and Antonia found some nice frogs too 🐸

📸 We had a group photo before doing our fitness session on the area of grass by Millennium Bridge. This involved various relays (and some very impressive speed-skipping and hopping).

👌 With everyone just a little bit more tired, we headed back to base to stretch and go to the pub. Some of us were also lucky enough to be collecting some incredibly yummy biscuits baked by Ellie and Ben for their charity fundraising effort 🍪

🙌We've got a task on Friday morning needing a few more pairs of hands and various missions available so do please sign up if you're able to. There are also currently a couple more spaces for tree-planting in Haxby, which not only sounds really fun and worthwhile but also offers the possibility to win a bottle of wine 🍷

👏Thank you for your hard work tonight everyone, and hopefully see you again soon 😁