Setting the Trenchmark and Disrespecting our Elders

This week we had two tasks, one to the Library to dig a trench and plant bulbs, the other to Scarcroft Green to cut back some Elder trees.

We also welcomed two new runners: Jinxiu and Lucy, who got stuck in to hacking, stomping and lunging with great style. We hope to see them again soon.

GoodGym take on our Elders 16 runners/walkers headed to Scarcroft Green. As it's onyl about 500m away, the runners took a longer route - looping into town, before heading to the task itself. We arrived to find an INCREDIBLY EXCITED Ellie, wielding saws so new that they were still in their packets!

New loppers!!! (Barbara)

The demolition started rapidly, with people quickly dividing themselves up into those who were sawing/lopping down/hanging off trees, and those who were chopping them up and putting them into bags while avoiding the falling debris.

TIMBERRRRRRRRR, STAND CLEAR (everyone, while jumping backwards)

Pretty quickly it became clear that the bags were getting awfully full. This problem was solved in two ways: the logical council way - put the larger logs in this pile so they can be collected separately to the bags; and the GoodGym way - climb into the bag and jump up and down to squash it down. Both methods worked admirably, and we managed to fit all of our destruction into the six available bags.

After a quick photo, we proceeded to the fitness session. This was a variation on that much loved playground game, 'Stuck in the Mud', but done in a more... GoodGym way. Firstly, there was to be no standing still while stuck, after all are you even a GoodGymmer if you don't spend any available spare time doing squats? And obviously for safety purposes in the dark, we didn't want to be dashing all over the place, so running was replaced by lunging. Despite our taggers obvious advantages (Nick's long legs for one), our escapees did a fab job evading capture with a range of different techniques - Jinxiu's speed lunging and Ben's rapid direction changes, just to mention a few.

Finally we headed back to base, via the short route to save lunge-weary legs.

GoodGym go to the library After a quick 1.5km run we arrived at the library. While we were waiting for task owner, Janet, I briefed the group: * Remove turf * Dig a trench to a spade depth * Plant big bulbs * Half fill the trench * Plant small bulbs

Lucy asked if we needed to dig in a straight line.

We want no jazz trenches here (Stef)

Janet arrived to hand over the tools and bulbs, then left us to it. Luckily, the width of the trench was clearly marked for us with some bits of wood. Less luckily, Ed promptly threw one out of the way when no-one was looking, leaving us to set our own trench mark.

While the group set to work digging, I opened up some of the boxes of bulbs and tried to decipher the planting instructions. The leaflet clearly stated that we weren't to eat the bulbs. Always good to know.

My mate ate a daffodil bulb once because he thought it was an onion. He had to go to hospital. They said he'll be out in spring. (Stef)

With half the time gone, we decided to start planting the big bulbs in the first half of the trench, while the rest of the group continued digging.

Where do we plug the bulbs in? (Paul A)

Soon the small bulbs were in too and there was a 10 minute dash to cover what we'd planted with more soil and turf.

I did get a lot of trench foot (Debs)

With time short, we had a quick go at some hill reps, then took the short (1km route) back. As we neared the end of our run I realised that we were actually early, so Nikki suggested some wall press ups on the railway bridge around the corner from the finish line. Just as I called the group to a halt, Tim (worlds worst backmarker) went for the sprint finish. He must have been moving faster than the speed of sound because he didn't hear our shouts to come back. We carried on regardless and added a one minute wall sit to the 20 press ups before heading back for the cool down.