🦉 22 excellent GoodGymmers gathered on a chilly Monday evening for our weekly group run. We named, numbered and warmed up whilst discussing our favourite birds. Owls were popular, although some folk went for the innuendo options!

✌️We had two tasks this evening so split into two groups and parted ways. Here’s what Ed had to say about the Park Grove crew:

🧸 On arriving at Park Grove we split off into two teams. Nikki G had unfinished business with a mound of earth so swiftly got to work with a spade along with Laura, Jenna and Cara. The second team armed themselves with loppers and saws and set about cutting the willow trees down to size. All was going well until the lights from the school went out and Lucy discovered a very creepy doll nestled in one of the trees.

🃏 After completing the task the two teams joined together for a round of card based fitness. Each person taking it in turn to 'draw a card' (press a button on Ed's phone) which determined the subsequent exercise. There may be a few sore logs after waaaaay too many squats!

🍎 Meanwhile, at Holgate Community Orchard, we’d been promised destruction (hence it was a popular option!)

💥 They’re wanting to build some new sheds so the area surrounding the old sheds needed clearing, which involved some fairly heavy labour! Rich, Dan and Max set to with removing a stake from the ground, digging, mattocking and tugging until eventually, it came out! Others were shifting bricks, picking them up and digging them out. Again, a very manual task!

🪵 The other half of our Holgate crew were “Team Stick”. These guys were moving previously-piled sticks to a new location and removing side-branches/“nobbles”. The sticks were then sorted by girth and shortened to the 60cm standard. Much discussion over the accuracy of everyone’s 60cm measurement ensued, with Dom claiming to have “an unerring sense of 60cm”.

🌳 With two minutes remaining, Helen asked if one final job could be completed - sawing down a (small) tree stump. Rich volunteered and completed this quickly.

📸 And with that, it was time for a group photo and fitness session before a run back to base and on to the pub for some.

👏 Thank you everyone, good work 💪

For the second week in a row, we had a last minute task cancellation, and once again, our triumphant taskforce overachieved by pulling a trio of tasks out of the bag to replace the original one.

We welcomed Rachel to her first Goodgym task and Marianne to her first Goodgym York session, and congratulated Mitch on his epic PB at Kielder half marathon yesterday.

Then, after a Mr Men themed warm-up, we split into three teams:

Delightful Dom took his team of four around the corner, a whole 140m away, to continue weeding at Prospect Terrace.

He said: A small group braved the 140m run to Prospect Terrace, continuing on the good work started last week. Local councillor, Pete, brought us a heavy bag to fill and we got started.

Four of us cleared weeds from the beds, making space for a wider range of plants and pollinators in the spring. We spent a good chunk of time, and pretty much cleared the beds of all the 'weeds', meaning more plants will have a chance at growing - to the benefit of the humans and pollinators of Prospect Terrace!

We then went on a gentle 1.6km run to cap things off before heading to the Ackhorne

Marvellous Mitch took his team of 8 to meet Valiant Vicky at Park Grove School

(His legs were a bit worn out from his epic run yesterday, so Pete actually led the run, while Mitch pedalled slowly behind!)

Mitch said:

We arrived at Vicky's school and faced the large pile of soil we needed to shift. The task was to barrow and shovel this soil and fill in some raised beds.

In GG fashion we got stuck in. It may have been pitch black, some of us may have forgotten our headtorches, but after 40 minutes we made a massive dent in the pile!

One more session and we will have this pile cleared!

Legendary Leanne took her team of 7 to Fishergate Triangle to continue to prepare the ground for creating a wildflower meadow (aka weeding)

She said:

St Nicks were pleased to find that we could offer an extra session this week which may very well bring us closer to victory in the war against those remarkably resilient weeds. Fortunately they're much easier to dig up nowadays due to our previous efforts, and we managed to (re)clear two significant sections of the triangle. Our task owner, Maeve reported that there should soon be a delivery of woodchip which will be spread over the soil to slow down the regrowth and give the wildflower meadow a chance to get underway.

On the mention of a triangle-based fitness session on the way back to base, a trio of goodgymers mysteriously remembered they had some urgent business to attend to back home, so didn't run back with us. The last four standing made our way to Tower Gardens where we ran some intervals along the sides of the triangle there, and threw in some skipping, lunging and galloping for good measure.

Another successful trio of tasks completed. See you next week for more Goodgym York adventures!

😳 Well, this week’s group run started with a bit of drama as our task cancelled 20 minutes before the session!

🦸‍♀️ Never fear though, a trio of terrific Taskforce members organised a task each, providing a triplet of terrifically taxing tasks for our gang of 24.

🔨 Laura led a group to Holgate Community Garden for the infamous “post-whacking”. Here’s what she had to say:

🍐 6 of us carried the posts and equipment to the garden and bashed in posts around the young fruit trees to stop council mowers from damaging them.

🌱 Meanwhile, Abi, Dom and Martin C kept it local, cracking on with some weeding at Prospect House. Apparently they made a “good ol’ dent”, which is excellent news. They also “apparently” did 500 press ups each. I think I’m tempted to believe the former more than the latter!

🚸 The rest of us headed to Park Grove to continue shovelling the big pile of (now sodden) soil, clear more of the ground for it to be laid and cut the under-layer into just the right shapes.

✂️ With the three wheelbarrowers working incredibly hard (despite wonky wheels and uneven ground), we made good progress with the soil pile. Meanwhile, the weed-clearers dug and extracted to their hearts’ content, under a variable level of shelter from the rain. The cutters had fun tessellating various shapes of underlay to be covered with soil.

🌧️ Progress was swift, undeterred by said rain and Vicky was “delighted” that we were able to come tonight. It was soon time for a group photo and fitness.

🪜 Fitness took place under the shelter, with steps handily provided to offer us our theme. Step-based fitness it was then, and a co-operative affair, with everyone offering suggestions of their favoured step-based activity. Step ups, heel raisers, press ups and tricep dips all made the cut, and were then repeated.

🍋 Nicely warmed, it was time to head back to base for a cool-down and stretch. We were treated to some delicious lemon bar bites (thanks Barbara!) before parting ways to head to the pub/home.

🙌 Thank you everyone, for your patience in the initial chaos and particularly for the sourcing of the triumphant task trio. See you next time!

• I’m aware this isn’t actually a pun but the opportunity to use the word triumvirate was too good to miss 👌

👋 20 GoodGymmers met on a sunny evening for our group run. We were thrilled to welcome a few new faces. Beattie was visiting from London while Paddy has recently moved up after doing a few sessions with GG Bristol. Ivana and Rachel both came along for their first GG sessions tonight. It was brilliant to meet you all and we hope we’ll see you again soon.

🍝 We named, numbered and warmed up while discussing our favourite nostalgic food from childhood. Macaroni cheese was a surprise hit, along with various snacks and the like. We were soon ready to run off for our task.

🍎 We were headed to Leeman’s Park Community Orchard where we were helping Abundance York with various jobs. Mitch and Rich immediately nabbed the litter pickers to form “Team Apple”, also nominating themselves as bad and good apple respectively. Their job was to pick up any windfall apples and assign them into the good or bad apple boxes. Sadly, there were significantly more bad apples than good apples, but that was apparently to be expected and even the bad apples were making their way to the wildlife area so will hopefully help some wildlife.

🍓 Meanwhile, “Team dead raspberry” were cutting back dead raspberry canes to help them regrow and produce more raspberries next summer. Others were tackling the big bramble and thistle patches, with scythes, loppers and forks. Louise was delighted with the progress there, and Paddy seemed equally delighted to get to use a scythe for the first time 💪

🏃‍♀️🏃Lots of progress was made and it was soon time for a group photo before the party pacers started their slightly more leisurely jog back to base. The rest of us did a quick relay-based fitness session (accompanied by a very enthusiastic small dog) before heading to the river towards base.

🦺 Unfortunately, our arrival back to base was delayed after a few eagle-eyed GoodGymmers spotted someone in the river. Some incredibly quick thinking and acting meant we were able to reach her with a life ring and pull her out while Abigail called for an ambulance. Our resident paramedic Lyndsay arrived on scene first and was able to liaise with the ambulance crew when they arrived. Thank you everyone for your heroic efforts that may well have saved someone’s life.

🍻 Once back at base, some of us decided that a pub trip was definitely needed, to end a very unusual evening.

No rain tonight so certain people who asked which task was inside needn't have worried after all :)

We had two tasks, one to help out Baggator youth project paint their Pickle Factory and one to help out Full Circle, hosts of the Docklands Youth Project.

The Pickle Factory painters were led by Charlie and were charged firstly with checking on the origin of the name. In fact, in a bizarre and unexpected twist of fate it turns out that the Pickle Factory is so named because it used to be a Pickle Factory. Apparently it still smelled of pickles for some time after the factory closed. Thanks Charlie for confirming this.

The second objective was to get busy sanding and painting at this fantastic local project which offers the local youth all manner of activities ranging from bicycle maintenance through table tennis and even programming workshops run in their lovely theatre space. I'm pleased to report that great progress was made here too, though there is still a little left for a return visit in a couple of weeks time.

The Full Circle five plus four, so called to poorly mirror the alliteration on the previous task but actually inaccurate as the fabulous Emma joined us later, set off to clear their outside courtyard of leaves and brambles so the grass mat could be relaid. We were a little early so we squeezed in some step ups - where someone apparently fell over in an embarassing manner but I can't possibly reveal who - and an unnecessary second flight of steps.

Ann-Marie met us and we were soon at work raking brushing and bagging everything in our way until we had 6 or 7 full bags and a nice clear courtyard. Some of us will return to lay the gravel and mat next week, but Ann-Marie seemed really please with our progress so far!

After a varied pace lap of Queen Square we congratulated the runners at last weekends Kelston 10k and reminded everyone to check on their plans for Bucharest! Finally, a number of us went on to our monthly eats at Bella Vista, brilliantly organised by Clo and featuring a genuine Emma selfie at last.

And the run title? Well, Richard came up with the excellent It'll be all white on the night, but I'm pretty sure its been used. So I've gone with Caroline's lovely tongue twister instead - just because it made me smile.