It’s a bog’s life

💪 22 excellent GoodGymmers gathered for the workout of the century (until the next time) at Hull Road Park with St Nick’s. We congratulated everyone who did the York 10k yesterday, and thanked the water station heroes 💦

🎉 We also said a huge congratulations (in their absence) to Amy and Ed on their wedding on Friday (the first GG York-born wedding! In the spirit of celebrating, we named, numbered and warmed up by discussing how we enjoy celebrating special occasions. Drinks of different varieties featured fairly highly, along with food, travelling and lie ins 😴

🥳 The party pacers partied off while some of us went via St Nick’s to collect plentiful wheelbarrows (amongst other things) ⛏️

🗻 We regrouped at the park to continue tackling “the big mud mound”. We set to work swiftly and soon perfected our system to maximise efficiency, with mattockers, shovellers, barrowers, lifters and rakers all doing their thing to build up the bank for the local wildlife 🌱

🦋 Jonathan explained that this is part of a bigger project to transform this area of the park and basically make it a bit more natural and wildlife-friendly. They’re already seeing the benefits and the hope is to attract water voles to burrow into our new bank so look out for those 🦫

🦺 Max did a health and safety briefing about the risks of careless mattocking on top of the mud mound, which James and Martin definitely heeded…

👍 There was shovelling with a gusto, running with barrows and co-ordinated barrow-lifting, with Vicky impersonating a supermarket checkout tannoy at times, to ensure maximum efficiency. Abigail and Martin jumped the fence (which will hopefully be surplus and therefore removed once our bank is properly established) to rake the tipped mud onto the bank. Care had to be taken not to fall into the bog and Abigail soon learned why some of us have dedicated GoodGym given the amount of soil that ended up in her trainers 👟

🏃‍♀️🚴 Having made a huge amount of progress with the mud mound, it was soon time to head back. We replaced the fitness session with extra mud-moving and ran back to base where we stretched off.

🍳 We also discussed the parkrun-breakfast-community mission combo on Saturday (and why it’s especially important to come to at least breakfast this week given that post-parkrun Knavesmire breakfast days may be numbered 😳