An outstanding crowd of 44 GG Yorkies completed a huge range of tasks at Millthorpe School as part of our #runandtalk event

Mental Health Ambassador Nick opened up the evening tonight with a brilliant explanation of what #runandtalk is all about. Running is great for mental health in many ways but GoodGym really helps by making us feel connected to our communities, being sociable with other people and giving runners an overall sense of fulfillment.

We introduced lovely new runners Ian and Zoe, and gave massive cheers to Nikki who finally got to wear the Cape of Good Deeds after completing her 50th good deed months ago. Next up was the Brilliant Bev who got to wear the Centurion Cape for completing 100 good deeds!

Our task tonight was with Emma, who runs a 'Forest School' on the grounds of Millthorpe School. Emma had saved us after our original task was cancelled and had a job list as long as her arm. We had to (take a deep breath):

• pull up two pond liners from a pond which hadn't been entirely drained
• dig a series of holes along the fence for bushes to be planted
• bark the whole campfire circle (with bark that was really far away)
• weed a border
• dig up deep-set posts from the old boardwalk
• remove all the old wood/chicken wire from the boardwalk and fill up Emma's car
• move loads of bits of wood to make a new, neat pile

Phew. Good thing a big crowd turned up, eh?

Barbara grabbed a wheelbarrow and set straight off to collect some bark with Tristan, Emily, Leanne and some others. The bark pile was so far away and with only two wheelbarrows it was going to take far too long so the team commandered a wheelie bin and filled it with bark so it could be done in less trips.

Where you been? Nick

Right over at the other side of the school! Babs

No, where you wheelie bin?! Nick

Dan had grabbed the sledgehammer and was tackling the big wooden posts whilst everyone who had baggsied a spade was digging holes for bushes along the line of the blue fence.

Most of the team were on the pond liner task, which was dirtier and stinkier than anyone had imagined. New runner, Zoe, was right in the mix and had already ruined her trainers on her first run.

It's okay, they'll wash! - Zoe

There were many tactics for extracting a giant pond liner that was stuck under a disgusting pile of sludge and it was getting pulled in all directions like a slippery tug-of-war. Every time a bit came up it would flick up and whoever was nearest would get splattered with grim pond slime, but that didn't put anybody off!

Over in the stick relocation department, lots of people were branching out and not sticking to the plan. Ste found a pair of knickers in amongst the foliage and we didn't know what to do with them so he put them in a bucket. Shortly after this, Katie found a bra and was so worried about being photographed with it that she chucked it at Tim.

I'm used to women throwing their bras at me - Tim

The bra also went in the bucket. Even with all that drama though we ended up with a huge and very neat pile of sticks in the right location.

Lizzie and Becky weeded the borders and Paul Kelly jumped onto sledgehammer duty whilst the pond team tackled the second, even deeper pond liner. Emma was welly-deep and doing her best honourary GoodGymer bit and nobody actually fell in which was a total miracle, even through Christine and Jenna both came pretty close.

As the last bit of pond liner came out, a huge cheer erupted and a crew of very grubby GG Yorkies were done. It was just the bark crew to finish off spreading the last wheelie bin of woodchip.

We had just enough time to fit in a Back to Basics Workout with all the best stuff like squats, lunges, burpees and a few partner-assisted single legs squats too!

41 GG Yorkies showed up to do some meadow keeping duties with St Nicks!

We welcomed along one new runner to the gang tonight, so make sure you go and give Stuart a big Yorkie cheer. Fresh from donating a kidney, very good Huw also joined for his second post-surgical good deed as our official photographer (and almost enough good deeds for the cape!). Helen was also fresh, though she would probably say slightly less fresh, from completing the Yorkshire Three Peaks at the weekend, and offered to be our achy-legged back marker.

I literally fell out of my car this morning - Helen

It was an unexpectedly large group and there weren't quite enough scythes and rakes to go around but Jonathan has never let us down on task-finding before and this was no exception. He quickly showed us a "creeping thistle" and asked anyone without a tool to pull all the heads off them, or just pull them out entirely. There was instantly a lot of debate about what was a creeping thistle and what was a regular thistle, but Bev summed it up well.

Pull out them brown things! - Bev

Whilst the thistle gang were busy getting their gloved hands prickled, some seriously hardcore scything was happening, and none of the scythers or rakers were willing to give up their tools. The new rule was that if you completed a mini workout, you could go and claim a tool from someone who didn't complete said workout. The first mini workout on offer was the brilliantly mad Thunderstruck workout, which comprised lots of running, high fives, squat jumps and burpees. As soon as the workout finished, everyone ran over to swap in for some scything or raking.

Our second optional mini workout of the evening was the infamous Cups workout. I suggested that we gather in a circle for this one and make it a slightly more intimate affair.

Intimate workout? Should we keep our gloves on? - Babs

Cups is either a very effective press-up and sit-up workout, or basically just rolling around on the floor - enjoyable either way and people seemed happy with rolling around as an alternative to pulling out thistles.

There were a few more tool swaps and it pretty much ended up with just Aidan on thistle duty whilst everyone else either eagerly anticipated the next workout, or tried to look busy with some bag holding or something. Emily always managed to end up with a new tool at the end of every workout and none of us knew how she did it.

The third workout was the quad-burner that is Sally Squats. Leanne and I were trying to explain to people that if you dance a bit with the upper body, it makes you feel better about all the squatting. Leanne was demonstrating some pretty serious armography it has to be said. Some people were so gutted they missed the workout that we had to do it a second time. Kudos to the Pauls, John and Becky who all boshed through a Sally Squats double.

There was just enough time to finish raking up all the grass and take what might just be our last group photo in full light of 2018. Time to start bringing the headtorches along!

Leanne's the boss of GoodGym now until October, when I'm back from my holidays. Do what she says, even if it's dancing!

This week's pun credit goes to Aidan

On a beautiful, warm sunny evening, 25 GG Yorkies ran to St Nicks to pull up Himalayan Balsam.

After welcoming an amazing five new runners to the gang, and doing a little coordination warm-up, we set off with Paul leading the charge and Tim bringing up the rear.

I had promised a fairly easy task on this very warm evening but Maria had other plans. She wanted us to not only pull up this invasive riverbank weed, but to dig a big balsam pit to throw it all in too. Undeterred by a bit of hard work, people grabbed spades and set to work.

Everybody else meandered along the path, (which I thought ran dangerously close to the edge of the beck) whilst ducking and diving over bendy tree trunks and doing a terrible job of avoiding nettles.

I am not wearing the right clothes for nettles - a vested and short-short wearing Leanne

Unfortunately balsam loves growing next to nettles and there was a lot of stinging and dock-leaf rubbing going on as people stuffed as much balsam into their blue sacks as possible.

A sting managed to go through my shorts and sting my bum! - Tim

Back at the pit there was a lot of grunting as quite amazing progress had been made in 20 minutes.

That is a very impressive hole - Maria

In the last ten minutes it was an all-action affair as everybody dragged over their bags of balsam to tip in the pit, including a couple of massive tonne-sacks that needed to be dragged through all the obstacles.

Regardless of all the stingy legs, nobody had fallen in the beck and we had a pit full of balsam, so I deemed the task a success.

We ran back and finished up with a little upper body workout, bringing back those wonderful press-ups!

31 GG Yorkies ran to do two good deeds across the city!

We celebrated loads of exciting race news from a PB-tastic weekend before welcoming along Are who had turned up for his first ever GoodGym session - make sure you give him a cheer. Then we wished a big happy birthday to Ellie B before cheering on not one, but two GG Yorkies who were completing their 50th good deeds! Massive cheers for Aidan and Christine, who got joint custody of the Cape of Good Deeds on tonight's run.

Rowntree Park

Half the group ran over to Rowntree Park to help Cath and Rosemary clear a big patch of weeds and plant new plants (which had to be symmetrical to the opposite side). It was almost as though Rosemary knew about our lack of horticultural knowledge as she described which plants had to go where.

The big spiky one has to go in the middle, really sharp and spiky!

It was like a description and a risk assessment all in one go, perfect for us. Cath still had faith and tried to educate Freya, Shelley and myself on some of the plants. Apparently it was not "all geranium" as I had guessed.

You can tell the lady mantle because it's furry - Cath

So once we definitely knew what we could dig up and what needed to stay, we were away. Wheelbarrows full of weeds were dumped, holes were dug in all the places we could avoid old concrete and we planted day lillies, hebes, forget-me-nots and skimmias.

There was one enormous potted plant that needed to go in the middle but even our strongest GoodGymers couldn't dig a big enough hole into the hard ground, so we had to mess with the symmetry and dig a hole elsewhere. Birthday girl Ellie proudly held up a big rooty bit of plant which she had dug out only to be informed that it was a special dogwood that had been planted a couple of weeks back... so she quickly re-planted it and pretended nothing had happened. The last bit was to water all the new plants in, and Ian got a duff bucket with a hole in it but was very stoic with his wet foot.

With our task complete, we boshed out a fitness session in the park. We started with some lunges, jumps and duck walks, and followed that with a partner exercise relay before finishing with the Happy Birthday Squat Challenge!

Sanderson House

While Rowntree Park got the birthday girl, the Sanderson House group had the two caped crusaders, celebrating their 50th good deed. On the way there, it was only fitting that we stopped outside of St Aidan's Church for a quick photo shoot. After all, Aidan was now practically a Saint, and he had the Cape of Good Deeds to prove it.

Over at Sanderson House, we were met by the Treasurer who had been asked to bring the paint for the fence, but didn't know any more than that. Fortunately it was pretty easy to spot all of the things we could do when we walked round the corner to see a garden full of overgrown grass and weeds, and a fence covered in peeling paint.

Our hosts soon found us a selection of tools and a battery powered lawnmower. Nick armed himself with a pair of shears and started hacking at the grass, to make it short enough for the lawnmower to get through, while others took a more rustic approach and pulled up handfuls of the stuff with their bare hands.

Anyone want a hair cut? (Nick)

Once the grass was tamed to a suitable level, Tim raked off the cuttings, and Max swooped in with the lawnmower to finish the job.

Meanwhile, Carl started work on sanding down the fence, assisted by Alaya. She was delighted to find a job that didn't involve squatting after completing her first half marathon yesterday!

Over in one corner, new runner Are was working with Emma and Jenna to uncover some healthy looking fruit and vegetable plots. Across the other side of the garden, Aidan and Lucy wrestled some nettles and brambles into submission and Christine set to work scraping weeds out from between paving stones. Within 30 minutes, green bins and compost bins were filled to bursting. We still hadn't opened the paint tins - but that would have to be a job for another day.

Aidan handed the Cape of Good Deeds over to Christine for the return journey. On the way back, we stopped off at West Bank Park to unveil another Egg special fitness session, led by Nick. While half of the group did step ups, pull ups and tricep dips (and a bit of monkeying around) on the outdoor equipment, the rest did some running drills, before swapping over. Then it was a swift run back to base for birthday cake-assisted cool down stretches.

T'was a cold winters night

It was also an early start for our final task of the year cooking for the guests of a Worthing Churches homeless shelter. This task was the one I had been looking forward to for weeks but also the one I was most nervous about . I'm not sure why after all what could possibly go wrong? Cooking for 15 people with 8 of us in a kitchen and no idea what we were going to cook!

All was calm all was bright

The fabulous 5 of us set off all sporting eye catching hats on a freezing cold but beautiful winters night ( post run endorphins have already blocked out the cold memories! ) Michelle, Gill , Belinda, Roxy and I breezed through the 1 km warm up to a warmly decorated and cosy house in Byron Road where we were welcomed by Luke and Martin who pointed us in the direction of the kitchen.

Causing a stir in Byron Road

It really did feel like Chrismas with a huge box of fresh food ready for our ready steady cook task of turkey stir fry with an oriental kick ! The 5 of us set about chopping vegetables ( Makes a nice change from pruning ) and planning the running order of events We were quickly joined by Paul ( fresh from his travels) Tamsin and Anne.

A recipe for ..........success

A range cooker ,two big frying pans, a large saucepan , a huge deep baking tray , a selection of utensils plus an amazing team of cooks were all the ingredients we needed and 30 (ish) minutes later we were serving up our gastronomic delight onto individual plates ready for the taste testing by the residents.

Tree - mendous

It seems that our cooking skills went down very well and it was thumbs up and thanks all round form our hosts. After the usual photos we togged up with our warm weather gear and headed off for the mystery run with a few surprises in store!

There were stars in their eyes and lights fantastic

We ran along to Goring and in particular a house which has been beautifully decorated at the top of Sea Lane in aid of The Chestnut Tree House. After the obligatory 'oohs' and 'aahs' and a few photos we then set off for our homeward journey.

Surprise Surprise Carol singing

We couldn't resist a bit of doorbell ringing and a GG rendition of 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas' outside my house . Wow we were good ! So good Nick went running upstairs to get money before he opened the door !

Running home for Christmas

We headed for the seafront where the group did some extended efforts along the seafront before heading back via Byron road where we waved an 'adios' to Tamsin and Paul before heading back to Splashpoint and, for some of us, the pub for Christmas drinks with our park run buddies featuring the debut appearance of Belinda's home made amazing park run mascot ( yet to be named ) but you saw it first here !

Although this is our last task of 'term' and we are officially broken up for the holidays we are, in fact meeting up next Monday at 6 pm for a pre Christmas social run followed by food ! Watch out for the weekly fitness email for the final arrangements.

Festive wishes and lots of GG cheers

Julia :)

17 GG Yorkies ran to Changing Lives to paint three pink rooms magnolia!

Whilst a team of 7 went on a special Christmas mission in Woodthorpe, the rest of us ran to do some very challenging decorating. We welcomed along Shelley, who only moved to York yesterday, so we showed her all the best bits of York on our run like err.. the front of the train station and Marygate car park. Make sure you give her a big cheer!

Cara was armed and ready when we arrived, her paintbrush never left her hand. Our challenge was to cover the bright pink walls in three rooms with a much more soothing magnolia. Leanne quickly realised that her running jacket blended perfectly with the wall and if she could just stay very still, nobody would even know she was there.. but she's too much of a good'un to miss out on some hard graft.

We split into three teams and I cranked up the Christmas tunes to bring a bit of festive cheer to the task. Over in room three, Cem was already causing carnage just by finding somewhere to put the lid of the paint tub without dropping it on the carpet. Having already experienced GoodGym paint mishaps, Tim was supervising closely.

Room two was the first to get a GG logo painted on the wall, but had also managed to pull some of the wallpaper off. Lizzie was handed a scraper to perform her best surgical work and remove a tidy square, it was like it never happened.

Just paint over it! - Cara

The previous colour of the wall was vibrant to say the least. We quickly discovered that several coats would be required and were trying to paint over dry bits as soon as we could but the pink just kept shining back through.

If you just look out of the corner of your eye, it doesn't really look pink anymore! - A very optimistic Shelley

50 minutes down and we'd done the best we could without waiting for it to dry completely. At this point were were just spreading wet paint around and not really making progress so we vowed to return to paint more on another day.

The look we've gone for is patchy and rustic - Babs

It was time to clear up, rinsing was happening in every available sink and Nikki was absolutely determined to minimise cleaning by using up every single bit of paint from her tray.

Nikki is never going to stop

With Nikki and Becky finishing the rinsing, everybody else was holding the pose ready for a group photo. There was a rumour going around that they were taking their time to save everyone minutes from the impending fitness session but I was sure that couldn't be true. They even did sink squats to prove their dedication to the fitness cause.

We ran back for a partnered up fitness session with all sorts of exercises in pairs, including:

• Explosive jacks
• Jumping squats
• Plank and squat hold
• The sit-up and punch challenge
• Walk-out relays

Next week is our last run of 2017 so get signed up for a 5km to St Nicks!