Happy BIRRRRTHHDAYY dear GoodGym!! Happy birthday to us! :)

Wow what a year. 20 runners came out to celebrate; Welcome to our new runner Naomi!

Firstly our task was for our home East Oxford Community Centre. They asked us to leaflet and talk to people along Cowley road about plans for the centre redevelopment, and engage with new people who don’t currently use the centre. We went into shops and cafes, and talked to people at bus stops and in the side streets. We split into teams, some of us were nervous talkers and some of us absolutely loved it.. we had some very interesting chats with a variety of different people. We also moved a piano at the centre and looked for litter as we went..

Afterwards we then went to a slightly wet Roger Bannister Track on Iffley Road (where we will be hosting the GoodGym Games in Summer!!! Do sign up now!)

Trev lead 2 exercises, and we experimented with strides, speed and recovery. You all worked really hard on the track session well done all of you! :)

PARTY

Julia went cake-tastic! Making us a 1st birthday cake (with a Vegan option), and it was a double celebration as Sarah’s 30th Also!

Music Thanks to Angus who brought his Boom Box and put together a set list from our fav GG tracks.. including Born to Run, Moves Like Jagger, Jump Around, Happy, Groove is in the Heart, Can’t Stop, and Eye of the tiger!
If you want to relive our party tunes? Open the GG spotify playlist here

We had balloons and banners, and a fun game to remember our favourite tasks from the last year! Oxford GG we have been to many many places, here are some of our favs...

Children’s Allotment (Mark)

Iffley Glebe on Summer’s evening

Varnishing, cleaning and Frisbee! (Aoife)

Cleaning Graffiti – January New Year Task (Kate)

Broken Spoke & Childrens Allotment (Emma)

Painting community centre (Kate)

Painting Citizens’ Advice (Angus)

Oxford City Farm!

Tree Planting and Broken Spoke

Graffiti cleaning – (Ola)

Packing Christmas Shoeboxes – helping get into Christmas spirit (Rachel)

Hogacre – discovering a new area of Oxford and getting tomatoes and a snack (Bethan)

South Park Ivy and scything (Trev)

Broken spoke, scrapping bikes/cleaning (Ben)

Litterpicking from paddleboards, helping at Flo’s and all the work on the canal (Anwen)

Aston’s Eyon in the summer (Julia)

Thanks to everyone who came along, an indeed who has supported GoodGym during our first year! Here’s to many more!

Today’s group run began with a mini good deed, as a few early bird GoodGymers helped to move a stage at East Oxford Community Centre (our GoodGym home). We are always on duty!

The main task for the evening was to deliver leaflets around Iffley village promoting Cosy Homes Oxfordshire. Cosy Homes is a home retrofit initiative supported by the Low Carbon Hub. Their services would benefit many of the houses in Iffley, which can be old, draughty and expensive to heat. Our group of intrepid runners split up to deliver as many leaflets as we could, while getting major house envy and planning which one we would buy if we ever won the lottery! We regrouped at the foot of Abberbury Road (…aka The Big Hill). We ran up to the top in a sort of leaflet-delivering relay, and delivered all the leaflets with time to spare, which meant…

…there was time for some games! The first game was “Lamp posts” (not its official name, but it’s what I’m calling it!). In a test of our running, jogging and counting skills, the game involved jogging down the hill for a certain number of lamp posts, then sprinting back up to the top, with the number of lamp posts increasing each time. The second game was “King of the Hill”. Ben was duly crowned King, and claims his prize of getting a mention in this run report. (Better than a medal, wouldn’t you say?)

After the games...

After the games it was time to head back to base, with of course a couple of stops for star jumps along the way! (Or were they jumping jacks? Please refer to Sarah for clarification!)

On the home straight Trev caught the eye of some quite saucily dressed young men (students in women’s underwear… and nothing else), when they encouraged him with shouts of “Go on, Mo Farah!” We also sometimes struggle to tell the difference 😉

Finally, a warm welcome to Katie, and a big thank you to Sarah for the title of this report 😊

Our lovely hosts at the East Oxford Community Centre sent out a MayDay message, needing help spreading the word about their planned redevelopments.

Three Goodgymers strapped on their trainers, collected the leaflets and set off, ice cream in hand (well it was sunny and one must fuel appropriately for physical activity).

30 short minutes later many houses had been leafleted, fancy door knockers had been admired and the mighty trio returned to base ready for the evening's group run to Hogacre.