Leanne Allsopp

🥳A whopping 31 excellent GoodGymmers gathered on a crisp and chilly January evening to celebrate GoodGym York's 5th birthday with a group run, fitness session and cake - the perfect combination, especially after a mega 5-task 5th birthday weekend 🎉

👋We were thrilled to welcome Antonia to her first group run, after she joined us for a community mission on Saturday.

🌟 We were also delighted to present Izzy with the 50 good deeds cape of glory. What a hero 🦸‍♀️

🏃‍♀️ 🚶‍♂️After a (slightly extended) warm up, we jogged/walked down to Rowntree Park where we met Jenny from the Council Environment team who had brought a van full of tools for various tasks tonight 🚚

💪We split into various teams with each group being assigned a task.

🌿Team Green Waste (catchy) were wheelbarrowing said green waste from a large pile to Team Tree-age. Many frogs were found and rescued during this task 🐸

🌳Team Tree-age (get it?!) were sorting the green waste into different piles, depending on the twiggy-ness of it 🌿

🍃Meanwhile, Team Lop had their work cut out, cutting back a very overgrown area. Huge kudos to Lizzie who did a sterling job holding the light so everyone could see what they were doing 💡

🌺Alongside all of that, Team Flowerbed were digging flowerbed to clear it of everything except trees and one particular plant. Craig and Huw had their work cut out with a particularly stubborn root but very impressively got it out🌱

📷After half an hour of hard work, a lot had been achieved and a sense of satisfaction (hopefully) pervaded all. After a group photo and transporting all the tools back to the van, we said farewell to our walking friends and did a fitness session. We split into teams and did some relays, firstly running and then skipping. Personally, I had a great time seeing the many, many different skipping techniques. Everyone did brilliantly and then it was time to run back to base and eat cake 🤤

🍰With a choice of brownies and caramel shortbread (or maybe both 😏), all the baked goods were quickly finished and it was time to head off.

🙌Thank you everyone for a truly excellent evening and don't forget that we've got plenty of tasks this week to help us to reach our target of 400 good deeds (and 10,000k distance) for the January Challenge. Will we make it?! See all of our upcoming sessions here and sign up to one or many to help us get there ☑️

Credit to Nick for the pun 😅

Nine of us helped Holgate Community garden edge down the paths to the basketball court. We took roles, edging, lifting the turf with spades and hands and brushing the path. In an hour we managed to fill over seven barrows of turf and shear around some of the raised beds. A number of us remembered doing the same task two years ago during the January challenge when we celebrated Egg's 500th good deed and met Rita from London. Despite five of us being on our third task of the day there was discussion on the task about how doing Goodgym tasks improves the quality of our life, particularly in January.