What a difference a week makes!

In a massive contrast with last week's wind and rain we were treated to a glorious spring evening for the last Wednesday before the clocks go forward.

Meeting outside the Iffley Road Sports Centre - site of Roger Bannister's original sub-4 minute mile - on what serendipitously turned out to be Roger Bannister's birthday, we split off into walking and running groups.

Lead by Katie, the walkers set off for a bucolic loop of Aston's Eyot, complete with deer sightings and a beautiful sunset.

Meanwhile the runners were put through their paces by Bethan and Ben - our amazing new Run Leaders. Dodging fellow track users we completed a warm up loosely modelled on a Junior parkrun warmup (if it's good enough for a 5 year old it's good enough for me...) then split the group down the middle for the main session. Ben's group completed a pyramid efforts session; gradually increasing the effort distance and decreasing the recovery distance then working back down to the original distances. Meanwhile Bethan's group took on sets of 300m efforts with 100m walk/jog recovery intervals.

Suitably sweaty we managed to all finish at roughly the same time, which is one of the major benefits of running on the track - everyone can work to their own effort level. With a mixture of experienced and less experienced runners, people who haven't been able to run for a few weeks etc, running around in circles is a great way to keep the group together.

With perfect timing we exited the sports centre just as the walkers got back and all headed up the footpath for a few drinks at The Oxford Blue.

This was Amy's last session before moving to Cambridge, where shockingly there is no GoodGym! Good luck Amy!

As part of the annual OxClean Spring Clean, we chose to take on the tough task of clearing Magdalen Wood in Wood Farm of any litter and discarded items. The bright sunshine and warm weather surprised quite a few Goodgymers with some layers of clothing needing to be removed before donning gloves and wielding litter pickers. We had some extra help too from Susan Brown, leader of Oxford City Council.

On the surface there wasn't too much litter but a little exploration off the beaten path revealed a whole range of rubbish. There was the standard array of drinks cans and crisp packets, including what looked like the leftovers of a party with 40-50 empty cans of cheap lager in one small area.

Other more unusual items included:

• Records
• Shoes
• A very dashing gold and black dress (upping the class of clothing finds on litter picks)
• A Henry Hoover casing
• A bike wheel rim
• Discarded needle stash (appropriately removed in sharps boxes and bio-hazard bags)
• An Arsenal FC towel (probably worth discarding anyway...)
• Lots of empty condom wrappers!

Magdalen Wood is a really nice place for walks and bike rides for locals so it's always a shame we find so much rubbish here. Hopefully the locals will be able to enjoy the area a bit more now with less rubbish littered around! ODS very helpfully picked up the laden bags and other rubbish items after we had finished.

Welcome to Ketai for joining for your first Goodgym session and hopefully see you again soon! Thank you to our Lord Mayor Mark for reaching his 100th Good and Amy for reaching her 50th before leaving for pastures new.

100th time's the charm!

We're trying not to take it personally that the one day of filthy weather this week was the day of our 100th GoodGym Oxford group run!-Do we get wings on our GoodGym flag for reaching that milestone?!

This week's task was to distribute posters advertising the Lord Mayor's Charity Quiz. Given that the Lord Mayor is one of our longest serving GoodGymers and the quiz is raising money for several great causes in Oxford we were more than happy to help.

Dividing into a walking group and a running group we set off in different directions laden with posters. The runners jogged up the hill through Iffley and across the muddy playing fields to the Rose Hill Community Centre, then dropped extra posters off at various local shops and takeaways on the way back to the meeting point at the Magdalen Arms, where they were grateful for a chance to warm up and dry off while waiting for the walkers to finish their route. Lead (astray) by Mark, the walkers meandered down the Cowley Road, round The Plain then back along the Iffley Road, pinning posters up in pubs (and enjoying several swift halves) and cafes as they went. It might have been as much of a pub crawl as a good deed - I couldn't possibly comment!

Happy 100th Group Run everyone!

After a 2 week hiatus we're back on our Wednesday food bank shift.

We've had a calm few weeks on this shift since January, but Oxford Mutual Aid had done some reorganising of delivery days during their week of shutdown last week and so this week the parcel numbers were back up. Add to that the 23 Emergency requests for food support that came in yesterday and we had plenty to do this week! A busy shift packing food parcels for sure.

Welcome to GoodGym Perry - Well done for picking up the system for preparing food parcels so quickly.

Oxford GoodGym took to the water for a Saturday morning litter picking bonanza! Oddest finds included a radiator, two chairs, and the obligatory pair of pants.

Many thanks to Falcon Boat Club and City of Oxford Rowing Club for helping to facilitate this.

We'll be back in canoes and kayaks for a taster session on the 11 June...

We had a lovely evening of chat, drinks, dressing up and games at the Lord Mayor's Parlour to belatedly celebrate GoodGym Oxford's 3rd Birthday.

Congratulations everyone for smashing past 5000 Good Deeds in 3 years!

Thank you Mark for hosting us.

Good luck to Amy and Laura who are both moving this month. We'll miss you!