An amazing 44 GG Yorkies ran to St Nicks for an epic log sawing task!

Paul came along for his first ever group run with us tonight so give him a big old cheer. We also need to give some massive cheers to Jeff because he came to do good with us on his birthday AND banned birthday squats, an unprecedented move but once which pleased lots of people.

If you make anyone exercise in my honour, I won't provide cake! Jeff

We arrived at St Nicks and were met by Maria who not only challenged us to saw many logs of varying shapes and sizes, but also challenged us to build a wood store using some planks, bits of wood and plastic sheets. It's fair to say her expectations of how the wood store might end up, were not high.

A team of eight created a project plan for the wood store construction whilst everyone else split into pairs or threes and grabbed a saw and a log. When there were no more logs, we sent people to get more.

If you haven't got wood, come with me!

New logs were arriving thick and fast by the barrow-load and everyone was working quickly to saw the logs into 30cm(ish) long pieces. There was an intriguing array of sawing techniques going on including lots of bum wiggling and Babs sawing whilst running on the spot to keep warm.

The wood store team were on top form and kept calling me and Maria over to proudly show us their perfectly measured sawn planks and their expert tongue and groove fittings.

Look at our diagonal strut! You should make up a 'diagonal strut exercise' to celebrate - Nick

Abigail and Lucy were trying to saw an especially girthy log with the shortest saw I've ever seen. The rate of sawing action was off the chart. Flying insect wings don't even move that fast.

Why are we doing this? Max

Good question Max! Maria explained that the donated wood will be "seasoned" (fancy word for "dried) and after a year or so it will be used as firewood to actually heat the Environment Centre, making it even more sustainable.

In just 30 minutes we had created a huge pile of sawn logs and I have to give massive kudos to the wood store team for creating and constructing something completely robust and very impressive. Maria's mind was totally blown.

After a group picture we split into two groups with an easy-paced running group heading back whilst a faster-paced running group stayed back to form a human log chain and get all those logs into the new wood store.

We're having a log of fun!

We finished up staying on the woody theme with a few planking exercises to finish a brilliant evening.

Next week is my last ever group run as the boss, let's make it a massive one!

Quite frankly it was impressive that anybody showed up for tonight's run with howling gales and torrential rain, but 39 amazing people did!

We welcomed along first-timer Helen and gave some big cheers to everyone who ran the Brass Monkey yesterday, especially Debs who boshed her half marathon PB.

We also celebrated not one but TWO people who both did their 50th good deeds last week, give your best cheers to Jo and Amy, who took it in turns to wear the Cape of Good Deeds.

We kicked off with a warm up inspired by the Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans for Physical Fitness, before running off into the wet and puddley city.

Nick's speedy team headed off ahead as they had an extra mission to complete, Paul headed up the bark-chip moving team at Clarence Gardens and I took a squad to the boggy Greenfields Garden.

Our task was to release a row of eight compost bins from their brambly prison.

In Clarence Gardens, Paul's team were tasked with shifting a pile of bark to top up the footpath which leads to The Hut. There was also a sub-task to clear the leaf bays of soil and grass read for Nick's team to refill them.

Nick's team grabbed bags, rakes and leaf grabbers and headed off to the Bootham Rest Garden to clear up all the leaves. The main challenge was a) running safely with a rake and b) carrying very heavy bags of wet leaves back to Clarence Gardens to put in the leaf bays.

We ran back down Gillygate (mainly involving waiting at traffic lights) and skewered no one with our rakes. Nick

'Snow Pete and the seven dwarves' then got to work raking, scooping and bagging the leaves before realising the hardest bit was the run back. They carried them all the way back down Gillygate getting a massive strength workout into the bargain.

At Clarence Gardens, the new bark path was going well, Iain was keen for it to keep being topped up until the bark was all gone.

This path is eight feet wide and about as deep!

Leanne was leading the charge on laps of the (small) park to keep warm too, excellent stuff.

The bramble team cleared the whole area in 30 minutes, with Amy keeping warm with many repetitions of bramble barrowing too.

As Nick's team arrived back having wrestled with bags and tools, Loz decided that he was the most hardcore of the dwarves having carried three bags back (double bagging doesn't count, Loz!).

After running back we got ourselves super warm again with some of those Canadian Air Force exercises, doing sit ups, press ups and fast steps/squat jumps for time.

Amazing effort all round and high fives to every single one of you who braved the weather!