James is a volunteer at the All Saints Pavement Church and he had a big leaf problem.

Fortuitously, this request came on the first Thursday of the month which coincidentally is Beer Runner night!

Now we at GoodGym have an excellent relationship with the York Beer Runners, there are many dual members amongst the two groups and Beer Runners was co-founded by our very own run leader, Nick.

We put out a call to action and received an excellent response. Within one hour there were 9 keen runners signed up, most of whom had at some point been to a GG session.

I arrived with 9 pairs of gloves to a warm welcome from James and his lovely wife.

Lizzie set about with the leaf blower, under strict but simple instructions.

Make sure it is set to blow, not suck

Out of the darkness appeared not one, not two, but NINE EXTRA Beer Runners who had heard all about the task and wanted to join in. They were swarming in!

It was an absolute hive of activity as everybody gathered literally every single leaf in that churchyard, much to the delight of James.

Many hands make light work and it didn't take 18 people very long at all to fill all those bags of leaves. Massive thanks to York Beer Runners!

On another bright sunny morning, I dipped out of work for a very early (!) lunchbreak to meet Egg, Lucy, Ben and John at the beautiful Holy Trinity Church off Mickelgate. There we were met by the team and a van full of trees! These “young trees” were a lot larger than expected, and a little unwieldy coming out of the van!

However we soon had them under control and carried them all carefully into the church, ready to be assembled into an art installation for York Bloom Festival. There were certainly some very beautiful ones, and they looked lovely perched inside the church. The immersive installation is called “A Congregation of Trees” and will be on display from Thursday to Sunday – go take a look!

On the way home I remembered why you must always tuck your trousers in while cycling – luckily I was not on a fixie and managed to stop to extract the offending jean ends from my chain 😊

A nice little mini-mission to bring a bit of good cheer and energy to my working day

An enormous team of GG Yorkies ran to complete three tasks helping out in Scarcroft Green, Glen Gardens and 'The Nose' at St Clements Church

After welcoming our new runners we gave some massive cheers to Carl as it was his 50th Good Deed! Carl has been with us since the very first run and he shall wear the Cape of Good Deeds next week once err.. I've found it in my house move.

We also gave a massive shout out to all the runners who raced at Endure24 over the weekend and turned up all tired and with sore legs, especially Tim and Becky who not only came 2nd in the mixed pairs, running 135 miles, but also both volunteered for the longer run this evening!

Hardcore Endure24 runner, Paul, led out the longer run team to Glen Gardens whilst other hardcore Endure24 runner, Leanne, led out the second longest group to St Clements Church (which was a whole extra 200m past our shortest run of 550m).

At Scarcroft Green we had loads of different tasks going on:

• edging the pathways
• clearing overgrown greenery from the path
• cutting back low branches on trees
• clearing a huge area of overgrown shrubbery
• doing a litter pick

Everyone swiftly split into their teams, grabbed some tools and ran off. Whilst Graham was chuntering away about blisters on his delicate hands, new runner Karen was straight in, scraping the path edges and pulling up the rogue turf and weeds. Everyone on path edging was very amused with the teeny tiny brushes that sort of looked like giant toothbrushes, but they were surprisingly effective.

Whilst John was litter picking he found a painted stone which we gave to Helen to take on an adventure to the Lake District. So thorough with his task, he accidentally found the same stone 5 minutes later!

Maddy managed to find a tiny bicycle on her litter picking adventure and it was taken for a spin before being added to the growing pile of bags. With 3 minutes left on the clock, everyone joined in to frantically sweep and clear the last of the paths before we met the other teams for a group pic and fitness sesh.

Team Nose Weed (written by Leanne)

This super six must have run really fast on the way out as they arrived at St Clement's Church 10 minutes early. While they waited for taskmaster, Lyndall to arrive they located "The Nose" and had a 'nose' around. It's a community garden full of delicious treats: raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, potatoes, courgettes, and much more.

Lyndall asked us to edge the flower beds and get rid of any weeds to make it look more presentable for a forthcoming open day.

It wasn't long before everyone was hard at work. Every so often there was a shout of:

Has this bit been done? (practically everyone at some point)

Despite this, it did look a fair bit neater and most certainly 'done' by the end of the task. At the 30 second call, Mitch quadrupled his productivity in removing some grass from the last flower bed and just managed to finish his patch within the allotted time.

We paused for a quick snack picked freshly from the garden before the long run back round the corner to Scarcroft Green. There we joined the rest of the crew for Egg's fitness session.

FITNESS!!!

Tonight's fitness session involved a bit of push/pull with a partner and I think we have to applaud Katie F who gave a heroic effort in pushing Huw who is at least double her height. Kudos to Barbara also who paired with her own daughter and immediately regretted it, Ellie G is an absolute powerhouse!

After all that we split into four big teams for a planking and commando crawling relay - which everyone definitely completed and there was no cheating, none.

As we gathering for our final group piccie of the night, we were joined by the ward councillor, Jonny Crawshaw, who gave us a big thank you before we ran the whole 550m back to base.