Despite the rain this evening, a super sixteen GG Yorkies put on their running kit and left their houses to clear leaves at Clarence Gardens.

We warmed up by practising some important leaf clearing techniques, including the leaf pick-up squat, compost-turning lunges and the all important leaf-catching leaps. Then it was off to Clarence Gardens. Most of the group took a short detour to see the Christmas lights around the Minster, while Vicky, as backmarker took the executive decision to head straight there - meaning everyone arrived at almost the same time!

Taskowner, Iain set a small group the task of turning the compost bins to make room for a fresh batch of leaves, while the rest of the group divided into rakers, picker-uppers and bag draggers.

Paul Kelly came up with an excellent suggestion for finding leaves:

We should try under the trees

Which led to a big haul with many tonne bags filled, dragged and emptied.

Mission accomplished, we assembled for a game of alphabet fitness (during which Dom noticed that "the alphabet is really long" ) before heading back to base.

Incidentally, "E is for Energetic cheering" seemed to be the most popular exercise - which will probably come in very handy if you're thinking of Marshalling at Chase the Pud this Sunday. 📣👏😁

During the 17th and 18th century, Royal Navy press gangs would visit seedy local taverns to kidnap people and force them into service. This task was a very similar experience for Leanne, Dom and Tay as they were dragged from their cosy corner in the Punchbowl to help out at Clarence Gardens.

We arrived to find the council had already filled a number of builders bags with leaves. Louise was happy for us to gather more, believing the bags would too heavy to move. Obviously, we decided to prove her wrong.

In groups of twos and threes (with a couple of solo efforts for good measure), we ran / walked the bags over to the beds. We then tipped and spread the already mulching leaves over the seemingly never-ending amount of cardboard Louise was putting down.

When the pre-filled bags ran out, we rotated filling and dragging the bags using leaves the council has piled up. Assertive project management from yours truly ensured everyone stayed motivated and working hard for the duration of the task.

Eventually, with Louise's cardboard mountain exhausted, we finished covering the beds with a whole five minutes to spare. In the spring, the beds will be planted with unspecified fruit and berries, providing local people with an excellent alternative to the more mundane bar snacks available in the Punchbowl.

Thanks to Dom for the excellent pun and a special mention to Tay for acting as task photographer and not causing a scene despite me failing to mention it was her 100th task (sorry!).

🦸🏼‍♀️🦸‍♂️20 fantastic GoodGymmers met at CVS for our group run tonight. We were thrilled to welcome Ally and Emily for their first GoodGym experiences. We were also very excited to be able to congratulate Egg on her epic 600 (+1) good deeds. What an incredible achievement, and fully deserving of the cape of glory.

🔦 Thank you so much to everyone who supported our #RunBrightatNight campaign. Let's keep going with the hi viz and headtorches so we can all stay safe while running this winter 👌

🎃 After a quick rundown of our Halloween plans/facts/jokes/miscellaneous, we warmed up while Pete led a walking group.

🍁 We were headed to Clarence Gardens for a classic autumnal leaf-sweeping task with Iain from the Eco Team. Armed with leaf blowers, leaf grabbers, snow shovels and rakes, we set to work tidying the park of its leaves.

🍂 Meanwhile, a group set to work on the compost heap, digging out some excitingly steaming compost and then replacing it with tonight's gathered leaves for next year's compost.

🤯 After some great teamwork all round, we did a brain teaser fitness session with everyone before the walking group headed off. After a few rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors, the runners set off and we arrived back at CVS in an almost synchronised way with our walking pals. After a quick stretch, some of us headed to the pub and some headed home.

🙌 Thank you everyone for some great leaf-clearing action, and another huge welcome to Emily and Ally - we hope to see you again soon.

☑️ Don't forget that there's still time to sign up for: 🌾 Wednesday evening's community mission at York Unifying Multicultural Initiatives allotment. 🦋 Friday morning's community mission to plant a sensory garden at Foss Park Hospital. 🥳 The Saturday morning double (or either/or) of York parkrun 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ followed by a community mission at Mayfields wildflower meadow 🌺

👏 Thank you everyone, hope to see you next week and remember in the meantime, #RunBrightatNight 💡

Quite frankly it was impressive that anybody showed up for tonight's run with howling gales and torrential rain, but 39 amazing people did!

We welcomed along first-timer Helen and gave some big cheers to everyone who ran the Brass Monkey yesterday, especially Debs who boshed her half marathon PB.

We also celebrated not one but TWO people who both did their 50th good deeds last week, give your best cheers to Jo and Amy, who took it in turns to wear the Cape of Good Deeds.

We kicked off with a warm up inspired by the Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans for Physical Fitness, before running off into the wet and puddley city.

Nick's speedy team headed off ahead as they had an extra mission to complete, Paul headed up the bark-chip moving team at Clarence Gardens and I took a squad to the boggy Greenfields Garden.

Our task was to release a row of eight compost bins from their brambly prison.

In Clarence Gardens, Paul's team were tasked with shifting a pile of bark to top up the footpath which leads to The Hut. There was also a sub-task to clear the leaf bays of soil and grass read for Nick's team to refill them.

Nick's team grabbed bags, rakes and leaf grabbers and headed off to the Bootham Rest Garden to clear up all the leaves. The main challenge was a) running safely with a rake and b) carrying very heavy bags of wet leaves back to Clarence Gardens to put in the leaf bays.

We ran back down Gillygate (mainly involving waiting at traffic lights) and skewered no one with our rakes. Nick

'Snow Pete and the seven dwarves' then got to work raking, scooping and bagging the leaves before realising the hardest bit was the run back. They carried them all the way back down Gillygate getting a massive strength workout into the bargain.

At Clarence Gardens, the new bark path was going well, Iain was keen for it to keep being topped up until the bark was all gone.

This path is eight feet wide and about as deep!

Leanne was leading the charge on laps of the (small) park to keep warm too, excellent stuff.

The bramble team cleared the whole area in 30 minutes, with Amy keeping warm with many repetitions of bramble barrowing too.

As Nick's team arrived back having wrestled with bags and tools, Loz decided that he was the most hardcore of the dwarves having carried three bags back (double bagging doesn't count, Loz!).

After running back we got ourselves super warm again with some of those Canadian Air Force exercises, doing sit ups, press ups and fast steps/squat jumps for time.

Amazing effort all round and high fives to every single one of you who braved the weather!

27 runners came to set a massive leaf bagging record at Clarence Gardens!

First of all we had to give an enormous cheer to Rich who joined us despite completing the Hardmoors 80 at the weekend (thats 80 miles of hills and mud...) so please make sure you go and give him your best cheers - amazing stuff!

We also welcomed along two newbies to the gang, big cheers please for Abigail and Graeme.

We headed off to Clarence Gardens on what had been a very wet afternoon. Despite there being brand new brooms available, no broom was good enough to scrape wet leaves off wet grass.

Last year we filled 55 bags of (dry) leaves on this annual challenge and tonight we had fewer runners, so I tried to gently encourage everyone to work quickly.

LESS CHAT, MORE RAKING!!!!

The team were filling black bags with wet leaves as fast as they could. Newbie Graeme was raking at a pace that can only be defined as supersonic and team Griff had the biggest piles you've ever seen.

We've got piles. Big, slimy piles.

Once bags were filled, they were being passed over the high, spiky fence to be loaded into the van. Most bags made it across unscathed, one or two were mildly pierced but astoundingly none were impaled.

Task owner Iain drove the van up the road to Greenfields Garden whilst Mitch led a small but mighty squad up there on foot to unload the first batch. Greenfields is a fab community garden which provides learning for local schools as well as edible gardens which provide produce for local food banks and charities. These bags of leaves will be composted and put to good use!

Ten minutes to go!

The clock was ticking and everyone was still raking and bagging at a rapid pace. Towards the end we even ran out of black bags and filled up two tonne bags ready for a new composting bay which is being constructed tomorrow.

We finished on an EPIC 74 bags of leaves, plus the two tonne sacks. Amazing work all round.

Nick led the second unloading group up the road whilst most of us headed back to base. Leanne and Katie had taken on the important task of guarding all the tools until the van returned, and spent their time trying to locate the mysterious 11th floodlight, which apparently was in the van the entire time.

We managed to squeeze in a little Cha-Cha Slide before the second group returned. Much to everyone's dismay it was a planking/mountain climber version but I'm fairly sure everybody sort of enjoyed it?

At the pub, serial task owner Peter of Sustrans turned up to award us a fabulous certificate of achievement for doing so much to help with their organisation over the last few years, wonderful!

Great effort on a new bagging record folks. See you next week for present wrapping or rock carrying!

48 GG Yorkies took on two truly enormous tasks!

I put out a call to action today after speaking to Iain who was heading up our task at Clarence Gardens; originally a task to shift five tonnes of soil. There was a bit more soil than expected, not double, not triple.. not even quadruple but a gargantuan 22 tonnes. It wasn't even our only task, we still had a second task to complete and that was a massive one too - we'll come to that later.

There was so much to celebrate with massive weekend marathon victories from Loz and Tristan as well as a cheeky half marathon PB from Georgie. As well as all the running, we gave massive cheers to Brilliant Babs who was running her 200th good deed tonight, an absolutely amazing achievement. Go and give them all a big cheer!

Leanne and Ed were our walking crew tonight whilst Becky led the main bulk of the runners to Clarence Gardens for the epic soil moving task. 22 tonnes really is a lot of soil. Each bag had to be shovelled out about halfway before the rest could be dragged to it's final destination.

You need gloves if you're going to be part of the drag queens!

Meanwhile a smaller crew headed out on a longer run to New Earswick Bowls Club where we were met by Greg and a few other chaps. Our task was to lay the summer sports floor, which is basically around 180 large wooden tongue and groove planks. The planks were in storage and had to be taken across the car park and slotted into position. Each plank had to be 'jumped' into place to ensure it was flush - and Katie was definitely the jumping boss.

The crux of the task was that at the end of each row, a piece had to be cut to the right length before we could start the next row and we had all the planks inside and lined up when our time ran out (but don't worry, we're going to go back tomorrow and you can join our community mission to help us finish it!).

The soil moving crew cleared a record-breaking 17 tonnes of soil before their time ran out. But they did have just enough time for our cape-based fitness session which involved lots of exercises to either crawl under the cape or leap over it - check out the fantastic pics!