A big crowd of GG Yorkies, newbies and visitors ran to St Nicks to plant bulbs

It was brilliant to see so many people including three new runners - let's give some Yorkie cheers to:

• Anna
• Rachel
• Richard

We also had loads of visitors including Gillian from HQ, Graham from Islington, Alex from Bristol and Beth from Hammersmith & Fulham - so cheers for all of those too!

The Cape of Good Deeds

Your final cheers need to go to Paul who completed his 50th good deed at the weekend and ran in the famous cape this evening, well done Paul!

On to St Nicks and we were met by Jonathan, Maria and four wheelbarrows chock full of tools. Our job was to plant three buckets and a box worth of wildflower bulbs; a selection of wild daffodils, wild garlic, winter aconite and snakes head fritillary. Jonathan gave us some excellent instructions to help with our limited horticultural knowledge.

This one looks like an onion. When you plant it, the bit that points up, points up

One of the bulbs looked like a squid and that was very easy to plant to the right way up. We'll just have to hope and pray for the other two.

Is it still a wild daffodil if we've planted it? - Paul

Apparently the answer is yes, because wild daffodils are a whole different species to 'normal daffodils'. Whilst Paul was pondering, Becky was thinking a bit less about the plants themselves.

I'm normally really good at balancing on the spade!

I left her to her balancing game and saw loads of little trenches and holes being dug. With such a big crew, we'd planted all the bulbs in 25 minutes and had plenty of time to fit in our car park partner workout with exercises such as the partner back squat, the partner pull squat, and the partner chest press.

We had a nice gentle run back whilst discussing our best ever race stories! Join us next week for a choice of runs (7k or 3.5k) - you can sign up here.

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.

Two teams of GG Yorkies (and a special guest GG Bristolian) ran to two tasks and did a whole load of good!

We welcomed along Suzanne, a brand new runner to the crew and we also gave a hearty welcome to Matt who was touring all the way from Bristol, and had even offered to back mark for us - what a hero.

Next up we celebrated BRILLIANT BECKY who not only ran her 100th parkrun at the weekend but followed it with her* first ever* Marathon in Newport, boshing her goal time too. She'd also decided to run from work, and do the longer run.. bonkers.

Finally we gave a huge cheer to MARVELOUS MADDY who was running her 50th good deed and was knighted with the Cape of Good Deeds (see fabulous picture of Maddy being a goody superhero with err.. a trolley).

I led one team to a final Monday night task at Spark, which finally launched this week, whilst Nick led out the other team to Clifton Backies for some scything, raking and wildflower planting.

Now I could tell you a million funny stories from Spark because it was an all- action kinda night. We were on a massive clear up and move stuff mission and let me tell you, there was a lot of stuff to clear up and move.

• Move all the pallets and stack them neatly behind a container
• Move all the scaffolding bits and bobs to the secret door area
• Move all good bits of scrap wood to the secret door area and stack neatly under container
• Move all cardboard to the skip and condense as much as possible
• Spade rubble into rubble sacks
• Move all the bark to the little garden area
• Find anything that looks like it is rubbish and put in the skip (cue Aidan doing an excellent job of 'making space')
• Lift two enormous bags of rubble and move to the other end
• Shift 7 gigantic wooden sleepers
• Sweep up

Phew. It was a lot. There was excellent team work a-plenty as we moved heavy items and made human chains. Maddy pranced in her cape, Lizzie made a beautifully swept pile of rubbish only to see it blow away in a stiff northerly gust and John was enjoying a few bicep curls with scaffolding offcuts.

Ian was on superb form, firstly teaching Ellie the names of each individual bit of scaffold and then showing off amazing trumpeting skills with offcuts of plastic pipe to raucous applause. You'll also see from the pictures that we acquired a GoodGym Native American mascot. It was a truly epic 50 minutes!

Standby for Nick's Clifton Backies report...

To SPARK & Backies AGAIN #2

A team of 20 joined me to navigate 3.5 km across town to the Clifton Backies nature reserve. Matt bravely took on back marker despite visiting from Bristol (Thanks Matt), but it was York local Leanne who went rogue and arrived via a route of her own devising.

We met up with Jonathan and Becky from St Nicks and soon split into three teams. Five jumped onto the scythes to clear areas of tall vegetation supported by a large crew of rakers and the more creative folk got to work planting out plant plugs.

Paul almost scythed a frog (no harm done) and Jonathan had enough confidence to let us sharpen our scythes! Brave fellow! Very quickly the whole area was cleared and ahead of schedule too so it was time to clear up - which left more time for fitness!

Evil Egg had left nothing to chance and Nick and Leanne deciphered her instructions to lead a set of Lovely Lungey Pyramids followed by 4 sets of Super Squats - a grand total of 56 lunges and 72 squats of various types!

We weren't quite sure what a 'lunge to knee balance' was but made up something convincing before we all trotted back to base where Shelley weirdly got all excited when she found out she could do some press ups as part of the warm down - strange girl.