I tell you what I want, what I relay, relay want

To mark the 1 month birthday of Goodgym Oxford we headed back to the scene of our first task at Donnington Doorstep.

After welcoming our new runners Bryan and Alejandra, and welcoming back Matt visiting for the 2nd time all the way from Liverpool, we set off for the 1 mile run to our task. A hop, skip and a jump, and we were already arriving at DDoorstep, where we were welcomed by the lovely Dilyana. The Pre-school has a store cupboard which was in need of some sorting, tidying, and generally getting in order. Stacks of boxes awaited us to be sorted through, so channeling Marie Kondo we got to work.

Does it spark joy?

We sorted, we agonised, we folded, we tidied ..."how much duplo is too much duplo, 3 bears or 5?, what would Woody and Buzz say?"...we tried not to get distracted by playing with the toys or reliving our own childhoods. Before we knew it we had worked through all the boxes, re-stacked the keepers, and amassed a pile for re-homing.

Setting back off into the night, fueled by Dilyana's malteasers (thank you!), we took the long route back to base because Anwen is obsessed by the lamp-posts of Meadow Lane. It's the perfect spot for a fartlek session - sprint 1, jog 2, sprint 1, jog 2, all the way to Jackdaw Lane.

Having got the heart-rates up, the group may have thought that was their workout done for the evening, but wait.......there was more!

Splitting into 2 teams we got the competitive spirit going with a sprint relay game on the edge of the park. With much encouragement of each other, and some Bolt-esque displays of speed, it turned out we were impressively well matched, with only a few metres between the teams by the end. That was the most sprinting most of us had done since school! A short jog back to base, passing the Roger Bannister track on the way - I'm sure we all ran faster than 4 minute mile pace in those sprints ;-) - and the Group Run was over for another week.

We've already been asked back to Donnington Doorstep to help make-over their garden, so watch this space for more tasks there.

Next week we are teaming up with WWF Earth Hour, and running to Rose Hill to help clean up the Nature Reserve. You can sign up here. I'm hoping for daylight for some of the task, but bring a head torch if you have one.