Over the Hill but still Monkeying Around

Oh....The... Goodgym Trainer Anwen
She had 7 men and women
She marched them up to the top of Rose Hill
And she marched them down again.

And when they were up they did leaflet
And when they were down they did stretch
And when they were only half way up they sweated buckets in the humid evening.

We had lots to chatter about this week, with Ruth's weekend at Love Trails Festival to find out about, Bethan whizzed around the Didcot 5 race on Sunday, and we had our first ever Community Mission to the Cowley Road Carnival. We also worked our way through topics as varied as Blue Zones, favourite podcasts, cities of the future, training age.....The beauty of group running is the conversations can take you anywhere, and the range of knowledge and view-points are fabulously eclectic.

Taking the Thames Path to Iffley Lock we puffed our way up to Rose Hill - hard work on such a humid night! - pausing to admire the wall at Iffley Glebe (a previous task has been removing weeds from the stone wall), before hauling ourselves up the final slope to arrive slightly sweaty and disreputable at the Rose Hill Community Centre. This week we had been asked to help spread the word about a series of summer events at the Rose Hill Community Centre over the coming weeks.

Free screening of the Lego Movie? Or maybe the Repair Cafe or Summer Holiday Story Telling are more your bag?

Packs of leaflets and a map collected, and water slugged down, we set out into the Estate to see how many of the roads we could work our way along in 30 minutes. Splitting into teams seemed the best way to tackle the task, with each pair assigned a different section of the estate, ticking off the roads as we went to avoid duplicating. Once again, team work made for dream work:

Oval, Desborough, Ashurst, Nowell, Pattison, Wynbush, Lenthall.....does it sound like the shipping forecast yet?!!

Delivering leftover leaflets back to reception and stopping for a photocall, of course, the route home was round the back and past karate class, resisting the urge to join in! By way of a consolation prize there were both monkey bars (great for upper-body strength!), and a slightly odd roller-treadmill on the other side of the park, which entertained us for a good few minutes, along with a mini-podium for our very own medal ceremony. We're practicing for our winning appearance at the Goodgym Olympics ;-)

Rolling back down the hill proved way more comfortable than climbing up, and in no time we were back at East Oxford Community Centre, having a good stretch and discussing running plans for the weekend and Goodgym plans for next week.

It's a double-trouble Goodgym week next week - get your dose of Goodgym goodness on Monday and/or Wednesday!

Welcome to Vicky - great to have you along!