MAIN Uni parks Parkrun report at bottom. Plus more photos!

…

but a few pointers in the meantime!

thanks to all who ran a bumper University parks Parkrun no.4

Kate for Run Director! And a wave to her from GoodGym as not been in a while but is still helping to organise Track Sessions at Iffley Road! This was Kates first time as RD and she did a great job :)

Alice wins the record for having as many volunteer credits as runs at Parkrun (1 for each!!). a good starting point, we wish all the runners volunteered as many times as they ran ;). Alice also spotted a nice family and writes :

"Dave (dad) 100th Park run, alfie ( child) likely pb 61st Park run, jenna (mum) 35 min pacer - Park run tourism - try a different one each time".

Ben was a bar code scanner, and needed as much as there were 424 people to scan through! This role means he could have run and helped.. but he said he didn't want to!!

Trev did the timing, and said the first timers brief. the timing is possibly the most stressful role as you feel depended for everyone getting their FREE result time!! but all 424 clicks went in the right place and processing in Common Ground Cafe afterwards was a breeze. (sorting the tokens on the other hand!!!!!!)

Well done to Sam for running her second Parkrun and getting a PB! Keep it up!

Miss out? why not help with GG next month

University Park Parkrun - SAT 2nd April

Florence Park Junior Park Run - SUN 3rd April

… 🚚 𝗥𝘂𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 📯

We celebrated International Women's Day last Saturday, and what a wonderful morning it was 🤸‍♂️ Tail Walker Karen has put together a superb recap of all the excitement, including some lovely photos from the event. Thank you so much Karen 😊

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/universityparks/news/2022/03/07/university-parks-parkrun-4-050322/

As usual, we've also got your customary breakdown of the stats and facts from event #4:

🏃‍♀️ 𝟰𝟮𝟰 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗿𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 joined us on Saturday, including visiting parkrunners from a number of our parkrun neighbours who had been forced to cancel on account of waterlogged courses 🌧 A huge thank you to you all for a fantastic team effort to ensure that the event ran smoothly 🙌

⏱ 7 superb 𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘀 clocked in finish times from 20 to 40 minutes as part of our International Women's Day celebrations 🤸‍♀️ If the distribution of PBs in the results is anything to go by, lots of you took the chance to chase down a time! Thank you so much to all of our pacers 👏

🌬 New female and male 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 were set once again. Felicity Hannon finished in a time of 18:43 and Jack Eggington crossed the line in 16:07 💥 Congratulations on some fantastic running both of you! We spotted previous course record holder Brad hot on Jack's heels, himself also beating his own record from last week by a hefty 13 seconds 👏 We don't expect this to be the end of the course record story...

👋 31 people completed their 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 ever parkrun with us this morning. Welcome to the parkrun family!

🦺 38 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀 helped make today's parkrun happen. Thank you so much for your support! We always welcome new volunteers and there really is something everyone, including roles that can be combined with your 5k walk or run 🙂 Drop us an email at universityparks@parkrun.com if you'd like to get involved 💻

🃏 A full house of 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝘁𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻𝘀 arrived back in our pink buckets at the end of the event – a huge thank you to all our wonderful parkrunners for remembering to return these 👌

🔔 A big well done to the following on reaching new 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀:

2️⃣5️⃣ Tom and Susan 👏 5️⃣0️⃣ Jeremy and Phil 👏 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ Andrew, David, Philip and Zac 👏

#loveparkrun 🧡

We helped Florence Park Junior Parkrun this morning - 2 on the crucial timekeeping and 1 marshalling.

Love parkrun!

Eight (and a half) Goodgymers attended Florence Park Junior Parkrun for our monthly dose of joy.

Between us we marshalled, time-kept, scanned bar-codes, encouraged the small runners and admired the array of excellent attire that the runners were wearing this morning. There was a good mixture of football shirts, as well as some fabulous dinosaur t shirts and stripy wellies!

Having boosted our souls we then fortified ourselves with coffee and pasties from the park cafe and headed off to our next tasks.

****We love Junior Parkrun!

7 of us helped Oxford Mutual Aid deliver a little joy for Eid - Anwen parcelled up packs of toiletries and sweeties at Richard Benson Hall, and 6 of our ever-willing GoodGym crew took them out for delivery around Oxford.

Eid Mubarak!

Tonight we packed 38 parcels of food and hygiene supplies and delivered 25 of them on foot around East Oxford.

Peggy was excited to show off her snazzy new jumper, we peered at each other in actual daylight, and although more than 1 of the bag handles didn't survive beyond the car park fortunately all the cheese, greek yoghurt, corned beef, milk, veggies, bread and pasta made it to the 50 recipients in tact. There may have been a couple of head-scratching moments, but nothing we couldn't sort out, and everything got delivered before it was fully dark - an exciting springtime first!

Thank you to those who answered the call for donations and brought along some hygiene supplies to replenish the bare shelves with shower gel, deodorant and sanitary products, as well as other useful and appreciated items (tin openers, chocolate).

First things first, THANK YOU for turning out to make food bank deliveries tonight despite the dreadful weather. I hope you are all warm and dry now.

Secondly, I failed in my duties both as a group leader and a sister by not having cake tonight to celebrate Bethan's 100th Good Deed, which she did since last Wednesday. Double cake for everybody next week to make up for it! Well done also to Ruth and Alistair for getting to the 10 Good Deeds milestone. Warm welcome to Ariane who joined us for her first GG experience.

Tonight your efforts meant that:

40 food parcels were packed
32 food parcels were delivered by GoodGymers (the rest went by car with OMA volunteers)
which helped 56 adults plus several children and babies.

Here's some thanks from one of the recipients: "Thank you so much for that food parcel you made up for me today,.... Perfect!! It shows you care. You're a real life line for me.
Thanks again,
Your friend."

That's worth getting soggy for!

Big thanks to Tamasine for excellent work restocking and clearing up in the hall - the extra help inside was much appreciated.

Fresh off the back of our 2nd birthday celebrations, 29 wonderful runners, 1 fabulous trainer, and our very own mascot pooch, Peggy, were back painting the town red (and increasingly black!) for our routine Wednesday night deliveries with Oxford Mutual Aid.

After a weekend of glorious blue skies, sunshine and some much-needed vitamin D, the heavens opened on us; however no amount of rain could ever dampen our spirits!

With the promise of lighter evenings getting ever closer each week – with the light just about holding on til 7PM tonight (if you squinted your eyes titled your head and willed for it to be there hard enough!) - there was certainly a sense of excitement and hope on the horizon, further spurred on by the prospect of adding new tasks to our calendar very soon!

Perhaps too much excitement & hope from our trainer Anwen, who would come to regret confidently saying everything was going to be totally fine and under control, comments that were very quickly followed by a flood of emergency parcels and deliveries to pack and schedule last minute! Perhaps we won’t hear you saying that for a while! (Although with your super organisation skills, everything always works perfectly in the end!) – I’m sure we will still tease you about it never-the-less!

Our deliveries tonight saw 38 regular parcels and 8 emergency parcels packed. These parcels not only reached 62 adults, but also their children, including some babies too. Parcels included (very timely) Daffodils, handmade soap, lovely fresh cooked chicken and veggie meals, filled scones and some very tasty looking Eton mess! While it is remarkable how significantly fresh stock can fluctuate in availability for the parcels, it is nice to known we are still able to deliver parcels that are both personal and varied. This is only made possible by the wonderful donors we have, and the willingness of Goodgym-ers to turn up, week-in week-out and head off on a Wednesday evening adventure!

A big welcome to Angus who joined us tonight for the first time; it was an absolute delight to have you with us, and we really hope to see you again soon!

Inadvertent pun of the evening goes to Anna who realised just how deep the phrase ‘making a meal out of it’ goes, while parcel packing and distributing.

Looking forward to seeing lots of you next week, where we will no doubt be in high spirits, and can hope for less rain and more light, if not only to admire Peggy’s fabulous new barnet following her welfare groom tomorrow (Good luck Peggy and Stu )!