23 GG Yorkies (and a rogue GG Sheff) ran for the first time in 2018.

Yes, that's right, the wonderful Stephen from GoodGym Sheffield came along to join us - we thought he might have been sent as a spy for the January Challenge but we were really nice to him anyway. Also joining us tonight were new runners Robert and Amy, give them all a big hearty Yorkshire cheer.

We had to stop en route to our task to adorn Nick with the Cape of Good Deeds as he completed his 50th good deed in between Christmas and New Year. It's a brilliant achievement so go and give Nick a cheer as well, make his day.

We arrived at St Nicks to be met by honourary GG Yorkie, Jonathan, who had done an amazing job of loading up wheelbarrows and trailers full of tools and compost for our task: to create three wildflower beds in the meadow. We had to:

• Dig up three zones of topsoil
• Flatten the areas out
• Edge with planks
• Put down a layer of weedguard mesh
• Top with compost

Whilst everyone got stuck into some digging, Nick did some excellent cape posing with 'Ninja Nan' trying to blend into the darkness whilst making the cape look even better.

The digging was tough and there was a teensy bit of competition over who could dig up the biggest chunk of turf. At the furthest wildflower bed, there was some excellent teamwork going on, resulting in massive turf chunks. Sometimes we do question the quality of our work, particularly at night - but Jonathan seemed to think we were doing okay.

Yours is flattish. Them on the end, not so much.

Flat or otherwise, at 5 minutes left on the clock, the tempo ramped up as everyone lined their beds and threw compost on top as quickly as possible.

With the tools safely stashed and all our good done for the evening, we celebrated the start of 2018 by running up and down the steps of Clifford's Tower as many times as possible in a set amount of time. It would have been a shame to miss out on lunges so we upped the challenge by doing 6 lunges after every set of step reps too.

Next week Nick will be leading out a run to Clarence Gardens (he might have taken the cape off by then) - so get yourself signed up.