A sterling crowd turned out for the first group run of our vegan Egg-free future. We celebrated our amazing January and our record-breaking group run the week before. But most importantly we crowned our Goodgym Yorkie of the month for January. This was obviously Louise, she most probably broke all sorts of records in her January push. And ran an incredible distance over January especially considering she only started running towards the end of last year! So what are you waiting for! Head over to her page and give her a big old cheer!

Celebrations and self-gratuitious chat aside we stormed up the road to a task we had started in January at West Bank Park. A little adhoc navigations as our pedestrian crossing was out of order. We were met by the lovely Kristina from the York Council who set us off in 3 action squads!

• Squad number 1, headed up by Legendary Leanne headed to the far corner of the wildlife reserve to continue coppicing. They did such a good job they may have chopped down too much.

  "Oh we aren't to chop down that bush." Nick moments after John had finished chopping the bush down.

• Squad number 2, eagerly set upon trimming the hedge that we had started trimming earlier this year. Arguably more like a collection of trees than a bush. Lop-tastic Laura was a bit too eager and tried her best to drop trees on Michael and Tristan's head.

• Squad number 3 were releafed to be left with collecting up all the leaves that bordered the play area. Shifting all the leaves into 4 Leaf composting areas, quickly running out of leaves to pile on.

Amongst the task there were some who were attempting to bring back crude talk to Goodgym York. But as i said, Mitch, i dont care who is Coppicing a feel of who. I won't have any of that talk while I am trainer!

Task complete, group photo done and Kristina happy. We hit the road and climbed the beautiful and infamous Windmill rise. Lots of runners were making the Weeee and wooo noises they learnt on Egg's social run. And even more opted for an extra rep even when i said they could stop.

We were then off back to base for a cool down and a pat on the back. Extra special well done to Caspar and Kevin who completed their first group run with us today. Hopefully I will see all of you at next Monday's Group Run!

On the final Monday of the January Challenge, our 3rd birthday group run and my last ever night leading GoodGym York, an amazing group of 75 pitched up to do a stonking amount of good!

In that enormous group we had:

• THREE brand new runners - big cheers for Charlee, Thomas and Francisco.
• TEN GoodGym tourists from Newcastle, Ealing, Leeds, Bath and Portsmouth!
• TWO people celebrating their 50th good deed and donning the Cape of Good Deeds Give some hearty Yorkie cheers to Emma (who has been running with us for almost the three whole years but just likes to spread out all her good!), Rich and also to Louise who couldn't make it tonight but also did her 50th last week.
• TWO people celebrating their 100th good deed and swishing the Centurion Cape! (massive cheers please for Debs and Al who got their wings over the last few days.

We split into three running groups and a walking group, on a collective mission to transform the Nunnery Lane residential area.. with this list of mini and not-so-mini tasks to tackle:

1. Digging up topsoil, laying a weed membrane and covering a large border with pea shingle
2. The lamppost task (we'll come back to this)
3. Digging up deep set rubble from a community garden (saving the one young tree), taking all the rubble to a skip and laying a new layer of three tonnes of topsoil
4. Locating all the broken and rusty road signs within the area which need replacing
5. Building three raised beds and filling with 5 tonnes of topsoil
6. Edging the path in Scarcroft Green
7. Digging and raking up weeds and ivy roots from the Scarcroft Green border
8. Litter picking every street and snicket
9. Locate and mark on a map the locations of all graffiti on the estate
10. Levelling the area where we dug up elders last year ready for a spring seed sowing session!

The walking group were split into three sub groups to tackle tasks 2, 4 and 9. It took a while to figure out who was going to go with who due to lack of reading glasses. The lamppost task was absolutely the most complicated as appropriate lampposts needed to be identified according to a strict set of criteria, and marked as to whether or not they'd be suitable to display a neighbourhood watch sign.

So we're looking for dark lampposts that are approximately 2.2m tall?? - Paul

Leanne's group arrived at the Task 1 location (actually Task 5: raised beds) and Max was delighted to be able to use the IMPACT DRIVER, imagine a nail gun but for giant bolts and you won't be far off.

Then Mitch's team arrived and were split up to litter picking, community garden rubble clearing and adding extra people power for the raised beds.

Jenny, one of the three task owners, did more running than most of the GoodGymers as she went back and forth between the zones retreiving various tools from the van.

I need a boltcutter! Jenny

Then pea shingle team finished and moved onto Scarcroft Green, they were shortly joined by the litter picking squad and eventually the community garden team (though a few of those went up to help the raised bed team too).

We had a crazy ten minutes of raking, edging, digging, standing around having a chat, and frantically attempting to put all the tools back into the van. Then we only had five minutes remaining for the biggest, fastest game of Cones of Joy, ever.

It's a two lane motorway of circular running!!! Katie

There was just enough time for a gigantic group photo before the short run back to base. That truly was an enormous amount we achieved in about an hour.

Massive thanks to everyone who showed up tonight, or has showed up any time over the last three years. It really has been eggcellent and I think you're all the best.

Don't forget to do your lunges.

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!