GG Yorkies gathered on Zoom for a proper HIIT beasting. There were 10 exercises, it was very sweaty!

I asked people to summarise the workout in three words, here were the best ones....

Ow that hurts

Legs are jelly (x2)

Thanks for that!

Where's my beer?

Neck is dripping

I love Digby

Not strong yet

More more more!

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.

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!