On GoodGym York's 4th birthday, the Yorkies were invited to celebrate with a run, cycle or walk. Here's what they all got up to:

Ange and Hayden used their time zone advantage to get in first with a 4km out and 4km back run in New Zealand, and of course, they celebrated with cream cakes.

Louise wasn't far behind them - she got up at 4am to go for a four hour walk!

Egg got the rest of us warmed up by leading a special birthday fitness session which gave a lot of Yorkies a chance to complete their bingo task for the day - take a picture of another GG'er exercising.

Vicky went out GG'er spotting on her 4km walk around the Knavesmire and Mayfield Public Open Space. She found Michael, Jenna and Stef. I make that 4 Goodgymmers for a fourth birthday! Jenna even recieved a special present in the post - her 100 good deed t-shirt!

Meanwhile Laura went for a 4 mile birthday walk via the Knavesmire and woods and spotted 4 GoodGymmers going about their Birthday runs and walks.

Carl was pleased to get to the other side of the river - quite an achievement under the current flooded conditions.

Amy C mentioned that she was planning a 4 minute walk at 4pm, but in reality, she joined Ed to make a birthday message in the snow.

They also built a snowman...

Building a snowman counts as exercise, right? (Ed)

Barbara went for a 4km 4th birthday run.

Michal went for a 4km bike ride with his family, visiting the locations of previous tasks at Mayfields Public Open Space, the Knavesmire and Hob Moor.

Part-time Yorkie, Tom collected street names to make this snazzy 'Happy Birthday' collage:

I've never taken a mirror, party hat, cake and candles on a walk before (Tom)

Leanne had a similar idea and went on a 14 mile run to visit 11 previous task locations. She stopped at each to do 4 lunges on each leg, and to collect a letter to spell out 'GoodGym York'. She also did 4 star jumps next to 4 different graffitied lamposts, in honour of GG York's first ever task. There were two stops en route - one to eat cake outside Brigantes where we used to gather for cake and beer after group runs, and later for a 40 second wall sit under a bridge.

Lucy opted for a 4 hour walk past some task locations - including the 'Never-ending footpath'

New GGer, Briony went out for a 7 mile walk with her family. And of course, they had some cake to celebrate.

Joe did a 5 mile walk and saw 3 GG runners on his travels round Bishopthorpe, the Knavesmire and Hob Moor

Paul Kelly took a 'Dear Photograph' approach on his half marathon route around previous task locations.

Follow this link to see more of PK's photos

Rich reported that he and Nikki went on what Stava told him was his longest walk ever and Nikki took a million photos. They visited as many task locations as they could remember that were 'vaguely sensible to reach' It seems like memory lane is a long road!

At the same time, Debs was out walking down her own memory lane where she covered 25km, 46ish locations, accounting for 84ish good deeds.

Andy found a number 4 on his 22.3km run. He also did a 4.4km walk with 'Strava tax' allowed for- but this time Strava didn't take it and logged it as 4.45!

Cara went for a walk in the hills near her village. She was hoping that it might take four hours, or involve 400m of elevation to fit into the 'four' theme, so was pleased to find that, at the highest point, she was 400m above sea level!

Amy T celebrated gg's 4th birthday by doing one of her longest ever off-road runs.

I found slippy mud, sticky mud, sloppy mud and even solid icy mud. Thankfully no mud pies though.

Paul W ran to the site of his first ever GG task, rebarking the path at Dick Turpin’s grave gardens. He followed up with cake and then some flood tourism.

Bec walked along the muddy Foss thinking about happy times with GGers, after a fab Egg warmup. Then ooohhhed and errrrred at the floods.

Happy 4th everyone (Bec)

Pauline from GG Liverpool joined in the celebrations by visiting York Place on her 4km walk before completing a couple of good deeds - one in a giraffe onsie. She also got us a balloon! Thanks Pauline!

Happy Birthday GoodGym York! 🥳

A 38-strong GoodGym crew headed to Millennium Fields for an emergency raking session

It wasn't originally going to be raking and there has been a lot of raking recently, but we did have to rake because lots of grass had been cut which wasn't supposed to be and there's a short period of time to turn it into a lovely wildflower meadow.. so sorry team but I promise there'll be no more raking now!

Everyone was in good spirits anyway after an absolutely brilliant weekend of volunteering and racing with the Yorkshire Marathon and 10 mile, the official GoodGym water station and various fell races.

After a run along the river with some bonus wall sit action, we arrived at Millennium Fields to a whole trailer full of rakes which Maria had expertly cycled over.

There were three areas which needed all the grass raking up, and two of those also needed to be scarified so that wildflower seeds could be sown.

There really were a lot of rakes, but there were also a lot of us so whoever wasn't quick enough to grab a rake was in bag duty. Aidan had come to GoodGym fresh from giving blood.

I'm two pints of blood down so I'm happy to just hold the corner of a bag

Mel totally owned bag duty, spotting whoever needed one and ensuring they got it.

I am the bag lady

With many sore and tired running legs, fitness was optional and involved regular sprints over Millennium Bridge and up the steps. Uptake was not extremely high, back to mandatory fitness next week!

We finished up with everyone sprinkling some wildflower seeds and stomping them in, a group piccie on Millennium Bridge and a run back along the river.

If that's not enough good for you, there's a community mission you can get stuck into tomorrow, without a single bit of raking. Promise.

*Pun credit: Mel - excellent spice girls reference

Another wet Monday night didn't stop 34 GG Yorkies from coming to do good!!

We gave some big cheers for everyone who raced at Kielder at the weekend and for Amy who boshed the Royal Parks Half.

Pete was awarded the Cape of Good Deeds as he completed his 50th good deed at Hartrigg Oaks last week. If you haven't gone and given him a massive cheer yet, make sure you do!

Brand new runner, Emily had never run in the rain before (a regular occurrence from our friends across the Atlantic) and wasn't sure of the protocol.

Do I wear a jacket?

We split into two teams with just over half going with Leanne for more tasks at The Malthouse and just under half coming on a longer run with me to the mystery location that is Heworth Without.

We go to Heworth Without twice a year to help maintain their wildflower meadow, and most people can never remember where it is or how to get there, hence 'mystery'.

As usual, it was extremely wet and there was even an unavoidable bonus puddle on the way in.

I'd only just dried out these shoes from last weekend - fell running squad Lucy

Task owner, Roger, was very well prepared with a rake for everyone and a load of tarps laid out for us. Our task was to rake all the cut grass off the wildflower meadow, load it onto tarps and drag it across to the woodland on the other side of the field.

Lizzie was trialling an innovative approach to winter tasks by strapping a portable floodlight to her chest whilst Emily was just doing her best to rake near anyone with a headtorch.

We finished dragging the last tarp across the field and folded up the rest neatly, except Carl who obviously does not fold the bedsheets at home.

Leanne's Malthouse Report

19 of our finest good doers walked, ran and sprinted to the Souk just 500m away from our meeting point.

On arrival, task owner Emily and a puppy greeted us with a variety of tasks. Two teams set to work on separate painting tasks, while others challenged their spacial awareness by manoeuvring large pieces of furniture up the stairs, around corners into the upstairs room.

Four brave souls volunteered to go out into the rain to move some empty barrels and generally tidy around. That left Ian, who was in charge of ripping up old bed sheets to make rag bunting. He was soon joined by a team who added the torn up pieces to the existing bunting (and to their heads).

After 40 minutes, we ran out of tasks, so it was time to gather for a game of 'I went to GoodGym' -a workout for both our bodies and our minds (based on the shopping list game). I started the game off by saying

I went to GoodGym and everyone did one squat

The next person added an extra exercise and an extra rep "I went to GoodGym and everyone did one squat and two burpees" (thanks Paul A)

The final list of exercises were:

1 squat 2 burpees 3 star jumps 🌟 4 walls painted 5 second lunge on right leg 6 seconds of your very best dance moves 7 second lunge on left leg 8 bum shuffles 9 high knees 10 jumps 11 spotty dogs 12 high kicks 13 heel flicks 14 heel taps 15 second superhero pose 16 high fives

Fitness done, we went back out into the rain for the short run back and cool down.

On a wet and dark September evening, a lot of GG Yorkies were out doing good!

First-timer, Louise wasn't worried about any rain! Go and give her a big cheer for getting stuck in.

It was indeed very wet, and our two tasks were not entirely conducive to wet conditions.

1. Scrubbing a grimy area of decking for MySight to make it less dangerous
2. Raking a large volume of grass and forking the soil in the Leeman Road Community Orchard

We arrived at MySight with enough light left to see the task which lay ahead. Imagine tongue and groove decking, but every groove is filled with old grime.

The decking was pretty treacherous and unsafe for people with visual impairments. We were provided some buckets, deck-cleaner, some scrubbing brushes, a broom, a mop, / couple of scrapers and err.. a dustpan and brush.

This gets in the groove really nicely!

Ellie D discovered that the most effective tool was in fact the dustpan, as she used the corner of it to scoop out dirty grime.

Debs was carefully 'aliquoting' portions of decking cleaner to the scrubbers, as she'd calculated that there wasn't quite enough in the bottle.

Paul, who is recovering from his Achilles surgery, had walked and ended up in charge of holding the bag which everyone was dumping moss and grime scrapings into.

I'm really pleased to you got me to come tonight - Paul

We finished up with many rounds of warm water being sploshed onto the newly scrubbed decking and Vicky sweeping furiously to get it properly shiny, whilst John mopped up our muddy footprints inside.

Over at Leeman Park, as well as that Goodgym classic of lots of raking (with only four rakes), we also scarified all the grass and removed large tufts of shrubbery. In the task owners words:

Hide and destroy! David, Friends of Leeman Park

We made quick progress, with people using forks as rakes and Stef using an apparently sharp and slightly dangerous tool, which he loved!

For our fitness session the plan was to do hill reps by the river...however we spent most of the time looking for somewhere that wasn't flooded!

We managed to sneak a few hill reps on a small embankment in the end which everyone was slightly relieved about.