Occasionally a GoodGym task comes along that really appeals to those of us who harbour that deep desire to smash something up and engage in a little legitimised vandalism. And last night GoodGym Huddersfield was presented with just such an opportunity.

The wonderful Margaret Wood from Lepton Croquet Club had commissioned us to remove some rotten wooden edging boards from around the green. The boards, measuring about 10 feet long and 6 inches high were firmly nailed on to short, sturdy stakes and would require a bit of brute force to remove having been in situ for more years than anyone can remember. This job was going to require a bit of muscle, in addition to the sledge hammers, saws, cold chisels and other heavy duty implements Margaret had brought along. GoodGym is good at muscle, and loves jobs using tools, so this task promised to be a real treat.

However before the edge slamming started there was a small matter of a run to deal with, and it was wonderful to welcome two brand new runners along to join us. Richard Byrne and Meg Deacon heard about GoodGym via our recent Parkrun promotion and had picked a fantastic first evening to run with us, clear and a little chilly, but most importantly light. This was in fact the first time we had commenced a run in proper daylight since the early days of GoodGym Huddersfield last autumn.

The light is very welcome, not only does it mean we can actually see what we are doing on our jobs, but also opens up the opportunity for including some more off-road running in our routes to and from tasks. So we wasted no time in the latter heading away from the Stadium on the Riverside Way, which we noted was horribly litter strewn in places and would warrant a GoodGym litter pick sometime in the next few weeks.

The 2K run to Ravensknowle was swiftly dispatched and we arrived at the park to find Margaret and fellow croquetist Martin ready and waiting with a big bag of tools and direction as to which edging boards were rotten and would need removing. Dividing quickly into two teams of four, we were straight on with the job. A sledgehammer wielding Ben Godfrey making light work of the first rotten section whilst Kati Law and Louise Galvin carried the broken boards away for disposal, although they too were keen to make sure they had their share of “hammer time” later on.

Also having a smashing time were Fiona Armitage and Meg Deacon, quickly clearing a rotten board, and being particularly diligent at ensuring every tiny splinter of wood was removed from the green area. Chris Green and Richard Byrne were enjoying this one, finding that the rotten edging boards were presenting little resistance to a eager, determined and tooled-up GoodGymmer.

Thirty minutes later it was job done, GoodGym had completed this task and tidied up in record time! That left plenty of opportunity for a bumper fitness session, or a cup of tea and a biscuit with Margaret and Martin in the club hut. Amazingly the GoodGym crew opted for the latter, and we celebrated our success with refreshments and chat about the finer points of croquet.

In return for our efforts last night Margaret has generously offered GoodGym a free croquet lesson one Saturday in the future, details to be circulated to you all when arranged. It would be great to get a group of us to run up there again and learn the art of knocking a ball though a hoop with a big mallet, apparently it’s all very strategic and not nearly as simple (or easy) as it sounds!

I wasn’t about to let the opportunity for a bit of fitness work go entirely however, so after tea, biscuits and chat we had another Ravensknowle Park Wall Sit Challenge. With a total of 8 competitors (even Margaret had a go!) the competition was going to be tough. In the end it was new boy Richard who lasted the longest, looking very cool, calm and collected even at the end of his 2 minute 20 second effort which smashed our previously record by over 40 seconds!

Wobbly legs aside, we had to run back to the Stadium and enjoyed the route along Kilner Bank road and the impressive views overlooking Huddersfield at dusk. As ever well done to all the GoodGym crew last night, it’s great to have some new members out with us and I hope we’ll see you again for future tasks. I also really hope you all GoodGymmers enjoyed last night’s bit of “edge slamming” I know Margaret, Martin and their croquet colleagues are very appreciative of our efforts.

This weeks title pun was a bit of a team effort, inspired by Peter Gabriel of course!

.....or perhaps more accurately de-littery geniuses, cos that is what GoodGym Huddersfield were doing last night. We were de-littering to the tune of 27 rubbish sacks, the contents of which were collected from Rawthorpe's recreation ground. 6 runners x 45 minutes work= 27 bags of litter removed from the rec....that’s a pretty good result in anyone’s book.

As ever the GoodGym crew were keen and eager to get stuck in and get their gloves dirty for the benefit of the local community, particularly as for the first time since October we were actually starting a run in the light! Admittedly by the time we had covered the 4K to Rawthorpe it was fairly dark, but none the less this little taste of daylight had whetted our appetites for finally doing some tasks on lighter evenings once the clocks go forward this weekend.

Reaching the rec and donning our headtorches (hopefully for the final time this winter) we surveyed the job ahead of us. The area of low trees and bushes fringing one side of the rec was absolutely strewn with all manner of rubbish. Some of the lighter stuff, crisp packets and sweet wrappers had probably blown there, but there were plenty of other heavier items which had obviously been wilfully chucked into the trees too.

With so much litter to alleviate a spot of friendly competition was called for, and with 6 GoodGymmers present, comprising 3 boys and 3 girls the obvious solution was to have a rubbish battle of the sexes. The challenge would be to find which group was the quicker litter pickers, and fill the most rubbish sacks in our 45 minute work window.

And so, gloves on and black bags in hand we were off, scouring the area for litter to pick. To be fair it didn’t take too much scouring, the rec was simply brimming with refuse. The girls got off to a fast start, with Kati Law (a self-confessed lover of litter picking) filling a sack very quickly. Louise Galvin was also going well, even with weary legs from the Kielder marathon at the weekend she was hoovering up rubbish from the rec at an impressive rate. The final member of the girl’s crew Fiona Armitage was also no slouch and soon had a bag filled, along with finding an old laundry basket and other discarded items deep in the trees.

The boys were deep in the trees too, with Chris Green tackling the mass of wind blown detritus that had become tangled in the thicket. Ben Godfrey was also going well for the boys, considerably aided by finding a black bag already filled with rubbish and obviously fly-tipped some time previously. Meanwhile I was doing my best not to let the side down, collecting what I could in between getting the odd photograph of our activities.

You can always tell when the GoodGymmers are working hard, as they go very quiet. There was actually very little conversation coming from the group as we laboured away, each individual focussed on doing as much de-littering as possible in an effort to establish whether the boys or girls are the top litter pickers. As the session went on the huge piles of black rubbish sacks, one for the boys and one for the girls, grew rapidly, and at 8pm time was called on the contest.

Then the moment everyone had been waiting for...the final count up. Following photographs of the teams with our respective rubbish mountains, and in an atmosphere of tense anticipation the bags were counted. As with all the best competitions the result was very close, but on the day the girls just edged it with a total of 14 sacks compared to the boys 13.

Of course in reality it didn’t matter who won, what really mattered was that 27 bags of rubbish had been removed from Rawthorpe Rec and the place looked better as a result. That’s not to say the job is done by any means, as I guess there is at least another 27 bags worth still there, but GoodGym will return later in the summer to have a go at clearing that too!

Following such close fought competition it was nice to have a relatively short run back to the Stadium, just about 1K down Bradley Mills Lane to round off another superb session. Thanks of course to all last night’s GoodGymmers for their hard work and commitment, once again your energy and enthusiasm has made a difference to our community...well done!

Thanks also to Sharon Doherty of Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing and Robert Whittaker from Kirklees Council for arranging the task.

After over 20 years of running the streets, footpaths and bridleways of Huddersfield I like to think I have a pretty good knowledge of the town’s geography. Consequently I get quite excited if I discover a somewhere new, however small, and last night I had just such a treat. GoodGym found a little green space and a super circuit for interval work on the Springbank Estate, not a stone’s throw from the Stadium.

Why we discovered this little gem between the estate and the B&Q car park was because KNH housing officer Owen Cockburn had commissioned GoodGym to clear an accumulation of rubbish from it. Litter picking is of course a GoodGym staple and an easy win. Whilst we wouldn’t necessarily want to do it every week there is a certain satisfaction in getting stuck into an area strewn with rubbish and investing 45 minutes of effort making it look much better.

A task literally 2 minutes from the Stadium requires either a very short run, or a little creativity, so we opted for the latter. A 3K loop took us on a somewhat circuitous route to B&Q, and also gave us opportunity to make a mental note of a lot of litter on Red Doles Lane which could benefit from a GoodGym litter blitz sometime in the future.

Anyway nicely warmed up from our run, Owen met us outside B&Q to give us our orders and show us the task. Just a narrow fenced-in strip of land between the store and the estate, the area was absolutely covered in all kinds of litter, the usual sweet wrappers and drinks cans, but also retail signs and sheets of polythene caught up in the branches of the trees. GoodGym would definitely need to be on form to get this cleared in our 45 minute work window.

As usual however with minimal fuss and maximum effort from the team grabbed black bags and were soon scouring the undergrowth and leaf litter for rubbish. Joining the regular GoodGym crew of Kati Law, Chris Green, Ben Godfrey and Fiona Armitage was first timer GoodGymmer Jess Earnshaw. Jess was with us due to her usual Tuesday Yoga session being cancelled, but I hope we might be able to tempt her swap the Downward Dog and Sun Salutation for a good deeds more often in the future.

The dry conditions made collecting the rubbish less of a chore than it might have otherwise been, and I got a little plyometric practice jumping up in an attempt to reach the polythene stuck in the branches of a tree. I manage to retrieve some, but a couple of pieces evaded my reach😬! Once we got going it was surprising how quickly we cleared the relatively small area, and three quarters of an hour later we had about eight bags of rubbish to show for our efforts and the little slot of greenery which looked much better for our attentions.

That left a little time for the second hidden gem of the night! It turns out Springbank estate is centred around a lovely little crescent with a children’s playground in the middle, which is perfect for running intervals around. So for the next 15 minutes we were all running 150 metre loops, one hard, one easy in an attempt to improve flat out speed and top end endurance. I say all, although that is not entirely true, one of our number saw this as a great opportunity to pop into B&Q to use the loo! Well done to everyone for getting stuck in, particularly Chris Green who managed a total of 17 loops in the 15 minute slot.

From there it was just a 5 minute steady jog back to the Stadium on weary legs, but with glowing hearts from the knowledge that GoodGym have worked hard for ourselves and the local community. Well done team, you are all superstars!

Last night GoodGym Huddersfield we expecting to engage in the latest round of our ongoing battle with the Jolly Big Bush at Christ Church Moldgreen. Removing this rampant shrub from the churchyard had been the focus of our efforts for a number of visits over the winter, but at the weekend I had word that we had been beaten to it! The Reverend Cheshire’s husband had tackled the Jolly Big Bush himself and spent his entire Saturday finishing the task GoodGym had started.

Not to worry though as there was other work to be done, in particular focussing a large laurel bush, which was had gone a little wild, and like the Jolly Big Bush also required removal. But as ever there was the run to do first, and the usual GoodGym crew met at the Stadium ready for action and praying Storm Gareth would hold off long enough to get the job done in reasonably clement conditions.

As it turned out we were hardly troubled by the weather, admittedly it was cold, and a little breezy but rain seemed to be mostly absent as we warmed up in the car park at the Stadium. It is a short-ish run up to Moldgreen (about 2.5K), and the team of Louise Galvin, Ben Godfrey, Heather Wilshaw Jones, Chris Green and Fiona Armitage were raring to get stuck into some extreme pruning by the time we arrived at the church.

We met Dr. Michael, a spritely octogenarian retired GP and member of the church congregation who had kindly turned out to enable us to get access to the tools stored in the church. We were soon tooled up and set to work, one group on the large Laurel whilst the other had a go at removing some of the roots remaining from the Jolly Big Bush, which hadn’t entirely given up the fight yet.

The laurel team were quickly making good progress, cutting off the bigger branches and adding them to the now massive pile of offcuts from our previous pruning efforts. The roots crew meanwhile had an altogether tougher task though, as the Jolly Big Bush was fighting on until the very last. Ben Godfrey and Dr. Michael went at the roots with pick axes, crowbars and spades in a tactical attack, eventually after some considerable effort managing to remove a hefty stump and lump of rooty material from the ground.

GoodGym are experts at getting a lot done in a short period and 45 minutes later the Large Laurel was almost entirely removed, save for a few small stumps. The transformation was quite actually startling and with the Large Laurel and Jolly Big Bush Both gone there was a much better view of the rectory behind. With the tidying up done, and tools returned we posed with a grateful Dr. Michael for the traditional victory photograph before running off back to the Stadium.

Thanks to all last night’s GoodGymmers and of course to Dr. Michael for being prepared to brave what could have been potentially poor conditions in order to get another good deed done for the local community. GoodGym never rests on its laurels when there is work to be done!

Thanks also to Louise Galvin for this week’s run report title.

We like Ravensknowle Park and the Tolson Memorial Garden. GoodGym Huddersfield have run there a few times over the winter months to assist the “Friends of” group with various tidying tasks which keep the area looking good. And so it was again last night, 6 GoodGymmers set off on the 2K run to the park, eager to get stuck in to the task (and perhaps also the complimentary biscuits we help ourselves to once the job is done!).

This week’s task in the park involved removing fallen leaves from the area around the bowling green, and following the 2K run to the park we were raring to go. GoodGym regulars Chris Green, Heather Wilshaw-Jones, Kati Law, Louise Galvin and myself were joined by Fiona Armitage on only her second run with us. Good to see you back Fiona!

Brooms and shovels at the ready we were soon on with sweeping and scooping the leaves into bin bags, although such was the volume of former foliage the supply of bin bags was quickly exhausted and we had to resort to using dust bins and a handy wheelbarrow Chris found. Despite a forecast of rain it remained dry through the task, and following 45 minutes of hard labour we were all ready to return to the bowlers hut and see what treats could be found.

A selection of biscuits, flapjacks and chocolate rolls did very nicely and provided energy enough for the run back and a little bonus fitness activity beforehand...the inaugural GoodGym Huddersfield Wall Sit Competition. After a quick practice to ensure correct technique it was game on. All the GoodGymmers lined up with their backs against the wall, assumed the seated position and tried as hard as they could to blank out the burn of lactic acid in the quad muscles which this exercise targets so effectively. In the end it was Helen Wilshaw-Jones who was able to resist the pain for the longest, holding the wall sit position for a total of 1 minute 39 seconds, and looking like she could have continued for considerably longer. She did admit on the run back to having had some previous practice, as wall sits had been part of her physio rehab programme.

The run home gave us all opportunity to flush the latic acid from our muscles and the long steady downhill back to the Stadium on Bradley Mills Lane was very welcome.

Thanks once again to all tonight’s GoodGym guys and girls....as ever you all did a stunning job.