That rare thing: a litter pick with not much litter!

A couple of years a go Port Meadow was a litter hot spot, with tonnes of litter being left on the meadow regularly. Since then the situation has improved, but as it's a SSSI, a scheduled ancient monument, and also home to cows and ponies, it's always worth a scout around to check that the litter isn't getting out of hand. With good weather forecast over the Jubilee weekend we thought that a lot of people might come to the meadow, and that might mean that there was a need for a clean-up this week. Of course, we all know that the long weekend was actually a bit of a wash out! Still, we turned up en masse to scour the river bank and favourite picnic spots just in case.

Julian Cooper, the Port Meadow ranger, met us at the gate with sturdy bags and litter pickers, and directed us to the areas he wanted us to check over. Half a dozen GoodGymers set off towards Burgess Field to clear up some hazardous broken glass, while the rest of the group pottered along the edge of the meadow, over the bridge to Fiddlers Island, and along the Thames Path past the boat yard.

Port Meadow was a Victorian rubbish dump, and bottle diggers take spades to it to search for potentially valuable Victorian or Edwardian glass bottles. Bottle digging is hazardous as the holes are rarely filled back in by the diggers, causing danger of 'trip' injury to humans and livestock, and it also disturbs glass and other Victorian waste below the surface exposing it and causing the risk of serious cuts. Livestock have died in the past from injuries caused by broken glass. The recent rain had brought more glass to the surface where bottle diggers had vandalised the meadow, and our breakaway group filled a bag with pieces of broken glass. Literal life savers.

Meanwhile the rest of our team meandered along the riverbank and across the meadow. We were surprised and delighted by how sparse the litter was. Aoife's crew, who headed over towards the boat yard were the only group who found significant quantities of litter. Other than that it was a few cans, wrappers, bottles, a blanket, but really not at all bad considering how it used to be. In fact, the situation was so decent that we called it a night a bit ahead of schedule which meant that we just escaped the downpour. Unfortunately, the hardy bunch who headed to The Medley for pizza afterwards got a thorough soaking alongside their dinner, but you can't win them all, and the pizza was worth it.

What's a GoodGymer to do when caught in the rain without a rain coat?! Kudos to Henry and Julia for taking part in this week's Project Runway challenge of making an outfit out of a spare litter bag. Garland of joy went to Louise - Happy Birthday for last week!

This week we tried out a new format for our Group run. We stayed put at East Oxford Community Centre and did the task first then went for a run; controversial!

Loitering with intent outside the Community Centre, we welcomed Miriam to her first GoodGym session - nagging your friends too come along works folks ;-) - before awarding not 1, but 2 Garlands of Joy to Rachael and Rachel for reaching 10 Good Deeds. We have quite a few people reaching this milestone now, which is awesome!

Nipping round the corner into the courtyard, Tim Wiseman was ready and waiting with our task for the evening. Two unloved benches had been donated by Oxford Direct Services, but they were looking a bit shabby, so our job was to get them restored to their former glory.

Bringing our best elbow grease we set to work cleaning down the slats and ends with white spirit, scrapping off old chewing gum (bleurgh) , and then sanding off the old paint.

Between chitter chatter, hard work, and admiring the Tai Chi sharing the courtyard space, 45 minutes flew by and it was time to pack up. We carefully stashed the bench components out of the way, ready for our 2nd evening working on them next month. Step 2 will be getting the new paint on them.

Then, not forgetting that we are a running club, we set off for a run. We are really fortunate to be allowed access to run on the Roger Bannister Running Track, and this week we headed straight there for an intervals session. Using the half mile jog to Iffley Road as our warm up we jumped straight into the workout when we arrived. This week's challenge was 400m fast running, 30 seconds rest, 200m fast running, 100m walk, 100m jog, and repeat x3. Having previously run on the track in the summer holidays, when we've had it pretty much to ourselves, it was quite a change to have lots of company this week. What a difference term time makes! Sprinters, packs of speedsters, there was lots going on to keep us motivated.

Blood pumping, lungs burning everyone completed the run in fine style.

The beauty of running on the track is that everyone can work at exactly the pace they want that day, and the springy surface is just a joy to run on.

Chatting our way back to base, the stretches at the end of the run elicited lots of groans this week. Tight legs?! Don't forget those yoga videos I sent last week. They're miracle workers.

Great work as always gang!