Can't see the trees for the mud

A swarm of GG Yorkies ran to Monk Stray to 'harvest' some tree covers!

With Paul in the lead and Nick as our back marker (and very excited for the 'back marker badge' too), we ran to the north end of Monk Stray where we were greeted by Iain, Kristina AND Beki; triple whammy.

This crack squad of officers love playing a game with us at Monk Stray. The game involves picking a different entrance every time, even though the task pretty much always takes place at the same corner of the stray. What is particularly fun about this game is that most of the Stray is a mud pit, a total quagmire. The only bit that is dry-ish is the corner where the task takes place.

After our obligatory lap in the mud, we had a demonstration of how to safely remove the tree guards. The demo involved Nick being armed with a crowbar and receiving a big cheer at each stage of tree guard removal. We were asked to preserve them as much as possible so they could be transported over to West Bank Park where they were going to be used to house some new saplings.

Don't crowbar the humans - Ellie is always good for safety advice

Small teams each ran to a tree and started their tasks:

• crow bar the outside plank off
• pull out a lot of metal staples and keep them safe
• remove the metal housing, keeping it in it's circular shape
• saw off the wooden stakes
• carry everything back across the mud to the van

Barbara, Lizzie and Vanessa had picked the only tree which was entirely surrounded by spiky brambles, but they didn't let that get in their way as they hacked back a space to work in.

Nick hadn't let go of the crow bar yet and Bec had been quick to grab the second one. It was a race between them each time someone called out needing some crow bar action.

Meanwhile, the toughest part of the job was prizing the metal staples out. Stef and Max were on fire with this task and were working their way around the trees trying to extract as many as possible.

I've got so many nails we could open a GoodGym nail bar! - Stef

As the task was drawing to a close, we carried all the metal, planks and tools back over to the van. We were waiting for one team to finish and that team had the box for the tools too. In an effort to stay warm, we danced around a saw and a hammer in the same way you might dance around a handbag at a wedding. This soon sneakily escalated into a full workout involving squat jumps and high knee sprints (very well known for increasing core body temperature).

With the van loaded, we ran back to base and finished up with a few run conditioning exercises including single leg sits and the reverse plank. Don't forget to practise everybody!!