Merry Choppins

On the last big group run of our January Challenge, a huge crowd gathered to complete THREE tasks in Rowntree Park

It was a night of celebration (as always) with so many massive milestones being achieved over the weekend.

• Craig completed his 50th good deed
• Mel and Christine both completed their 100th good deed
• Leanne completed her 300th good deed

Absolutely amazing stuff, make sure you go and give them all a well-deserved cheer. Craig got to wear the Cape of Good Deeds and Christine got to wear the Centurion Cape on tonight's run, and Christine couldn't resist a pout every time anyone asked her to pose, she was also our back-marker and the cape made her even more visible than normal which was very handy in such an enormous group.

We welcomed loads of new runners tonight too, they probably all wondered if they were definitely in the right place once we began our 'follow the leader' warm up and Mitch started dad dancing.

On arrival at Rowntree Park we split into two groups, with one group coppicing a whole bank of trees and clearing all the bushy bits and blackthorn too. The second group were asked to cut a big hedge to 'head height'. Apparently it was about the height of Barbara's head, but Edward Twigs-for-hands got carried away and accidentally cut the hedge to the height of Barbara's head if she were to be standing in a large hole.

Well, it does look different!

The second group were also faced with a gigantic pile of woodchip, but fortunately only had to move enough of it to top up the area surrounding the small pond. Whilst all this was happening, a third group of five got summoned off to another task but this group was exclusively made up of new runners and nobody knows exactly what happened except that it involved forks and was a success.

The hedge cutting team were dragging a huge tarp filled with cuttings to a dumping area and the coppicing team had to drag giant, over-filled tonne sacks to the collection point whilst the rest of the team followed and picked up all the leftovers. We reconvened in the car park for a brilliant game of:

GoodGym Wacky Races!!

In five teams, we had a crazy car park relay race involving fabulous exercises.

• Bunny hops
• Skipping
• Sprints
• Frog jumps
• Hopping
• Dance-walking (think the style award has to go to Mel for being so balletic or team Moylett for their waltz)
• Walking lunges
• Duck walks
• Long jump squats
• Powerwalking

It was very lively with lots of enthusiastic cheering and a surprisingly limited amount of cheating, so I decided that everybody won.

There were three excellent cakes to choose from in the pub tonight including Huw's cinnamon buns, Vicky's caramel shortbread and a chocolate cake from Leanne - everyone really was a winner.

Keep your eyes peeled on the January Challenge Leaderboard - just three days remaining to stay on top!