A hardy 27 runners ran on a freezing cold evening to help out at Holgate Community Garden.

We had two brand new runners with us, give some big cheers to Mitchell and Andrew for rocking our their first ever GoodGym in sub-zero temperatures.

We also need some massive cheers for Lisa and Paul who both ran half marathon PBs yesterday at Brighton Half and Harewood House Half respectively. Not only that but we had a solid GoodGym showing at Snake Lane 10 too, with Leanne, Becky, Tim, Nick and Paul Kelly running their socks off!

We split into three groups for our run. A longer group, a shorter group and a walking group. The shorter group arrived at the task first to be met by Jules, and were delighted to find a huge array of tools at their disposal. The task was to completely clear a neglected patch of all the weeds and overgrown stuff which was well bedded in. Once the area was cleared and dug over, it was going to be used to create a small edible garden for the local community, containing fruit trees.

Around the patch were also four broken concrete bollards. Another part of the task was to locate/dig up the broken tops and match each top to it's broken base to see if they could be fixed.

The walking group were not far behind; they arrived to tiny squeals of excitement as somebody had discovered that we had been given brand new, still packaged loppers. It's the small things that make GoodGymers happy.

They're new! So sharp!

By the time the long run group arrived (fresh from some bonus hill reps on Windmill Rise) all the easy chopping back had been done. It was time to fork. Forking and digging up the roots was hard graft. We found all sorts in there; an old crow bar, a squash ball and what we thought were potatoes but were reliably informed by Jules, were in fact quince, relics from the last time the patch had been used.

Shelley and Amy were trying to make themselves look busy so I set them the challenge of compressing the plant matter down to make more space in the rubble sacks. This resulted in Shelley doing lunges inside one of the bags, which made me very happy. After this they took on the borders of the area, doing an excellent job of sweeping and clearing all the grassy weeds from the edges.

The first time I've ever lunged in a bag!

We finished up by matching the bollard tops to their broken bases, and running all the tools back to storage before a 10 minute round of Cones of Joy to get nice and warm again. Emma was making up her own exercises and it was a few stations in before I realised she was just basically doing a lot of press ups. With that resolved, it was madness as everyone did their best exercises in the dark. The cones did work and everybody seemed particularly joyful as we made our way back to base.