Now That's What I Wall Music

A totally amazing group of 31 runners came along to help with the epic task of painting 300 square metres of wall!

I'd done the maths on this one, and knew that with 30 people, we could do the task. It also seemed fitting to put out a call to action for 30 runners on our 30th group run in York. The extra 1 was a massive bonus!

Not only did we see some old faces back, but we welcomed no less than four brilliant new runners to the GoodGym family. Let's give a massive cheer to:

• Freya
• Helen
• Laurence
• Liam

The attendance of Laurence makes him (we think), the youngest ever GoodGymer at 18 years and 4 days old! It also means that the Griffins are an amazing whole family of GG Yorkies, we just need the dog to come along now.

Let's also give a massive shout out to Patrick who visited us all the way from GG Islington, and provided us with an awesome soundtrack for the run too!

Anyway, back to that maths.

We have 45 minutes for the task, with 30 people, that means you each have to paint one square metre of wall every four and half minutes.

Sounded easy enough, though that didn't include the extra little pillars and the ramp half way up.

We met David from the Friends of Leeman Park who explained that painting the wall with this lacquer would make a huge difference to the volunteers, by making the brick less porous and therefore much easier to get graffiti off. He had managed to get hold of enough mini paint rollers for every single person too, phew.

As David finished his briefing, the ever-prepared Nicole pulled out an apron to keep her GoodGym reds pristine - amazing planning!

The gang dived in, filling up their troughs and relaying down the wall. The lacquer is expensive stuff so we were under strict instructions not to spill any. As people ran back and forth, it looked a bit like an egg & spoon race with serious concentrating on keeping the troughs level whilst still moving quickly!

Progress was fast but with the mini rollers, the team had to roller at a cracking pace. Arm-ache was a risk, and there was lots of arm swapping going on.

Is this what you mean about hitting the wall?! - Paul, GG Yorkie

The squad tonight were absolutely exceptional, maybe the musical motivation from Patrick's rucksack helped too. With 25 minutes gone we were well ahead of target and as the clock hit 30 minutes, we'd painted the whole wall. With some lacquer remaining, we started on a whole other wall to finish it off! David and the team were blown-away with how quickly we'd done it.

With all that extra time available, we had a MEGA circuits session with some really tough exercises. Team favourites appeared to be the dancing station, the balancing zone and can-can kicks, which apparently are difficult without can-can music. Luckily all the squatters did can-can singing to help.

Ed amazed us all with his killer dance moves and even did an encore at the end to rapturous applause.

With that, we ran back for a cool down and stretch out whilst contemplating if there was a wall in York big enough to pose a threat to the mighty GG Yorkies.