Rake Against the Machine

On the week that GoodGym celebrates 10 whole years of doing good, 39 runners and walkers turned out for a huge triple task at Millennium Fields.

We welcomed along newbie Robert and current member Annis who was doing her first ever group run. Give them both a big cheer!

Aron led our 10-themed warm-up with 10 reps of 10 exercises.

Is this just our warm up, not our work out?

We headed over to Millennium Fields where we were faced with THREE really big tasks.

1. Raking up vast, vast amounts of grass which had been power-scythed
2. Moving a huge pile of woodchip to line the dirt track across the meadow
3. 'Sorting out' a composting area in the Fulford Cross Allotments

The compost area was a bigger task than originally planned. Much bigger. The idea had been to separate out non compostable items into a skip, then to turn over the proper composty stuff. Unfortunately someone had cut down what looked like a small orchard of cherry trees and surrounding brambles, and piled them all on top.

The new task - therefore - was to remove all the woody items and create 'habitat piles' along the wall and to get all the brambles, rubbish and non-compostables into the skip.

I'm pretty sure we did a mission here where we put the brambles in... NIkki G

The dirt path was quickly being topped with up, but once the top surface of the woodchip pile had been removed, it turned out it was a bit mouldy underneath and was steaming nicely.

Mould makes cheese, it must be good for you!

Debs located a full - and very warm - tree trunk which had obviously not been chipped, so she carried it all the way to the composting area like a trooper, to be added to the other woody bits in the wildlife area.

Those who had already been doing lots of scything over the weekend were amazed at just how much grass needed to be raked, because the power-scyther had been in and done the work of many normal scythers.

It's like a cross between a lawn mower and lots of scythes!

There was much excitement from the rakers as people kept finding frogs and Katie did several rescue missions to take them down to the river bank.

At the composting area we had done as much as we could do, the skip was completely full, even with Debs and Nick using any wooden item they could find to compress the contents. Our final job was to clear the path of brambley and branchy debris, and just as Jonathan was saying how useful it would have been to have a broom, Paul Kelly found a tiny brush in amongst the compost. Probably a shoe brush, but he swept the path with it anyway.

We all gathered back together for the fitness session, led by Aron. He'd found a way to keep nearly 40 GoodGymers busy with fitness on a piece of outdoor exercise equipment with only eight stations.

Each team will have someone exercising, someone sprinting, someone squatting, and someone resting!

To any outsider it would have looked like mayhem, but we all knew exactly what was going on and those who were 'resting' took on the role of cheering on the rest of their team. Everyone except Mitch, who just laid down and had a little nap.

We finished the session by taking a team picture with our brand new #GG10 flag on Millennium Bridge, before the run back to base and the post-run party!