Coming UP smelling of Roses

Week 2 of Goodgym Oxford and it was brilliant to see so many familiar faces back, as well as 13 first timers (hopefully not unlucky for some!).

After an impromptu photo shoot with Jamila Begum Azad, the councillor for St Clement's Ward who had dropped by to meet us, a poster delivery on behalf of Flo's The Place in the Park to our hosts at East Oxford Community Centre, and a game of 'tell us your favourite place in Oxford' we headed off to Rose Hill Community Centre. Councillor and Goodgymer Mark Lygo back-marked, making sure that no-one got left behind.

Now, I know that in a city as flat as Oxford it's an achievement to manage to find a hill to run up 2 weeks in a row, but find another hill I did (you're welcome). Up we went, with a couple of stretches of magical mystery tour en-route to keep things interesting. It's good for you to mix up your surfaces afterall. With plenty of chat on the way, in no time at all we were at Rose Hill Community Centre to collect litter-pickers and bin bags, then straight round the corner to the Oval.

I know you've always wondered how many bags of litter 27 runners can collect in 25 minutes, and the answer is 16. Most unusual pieces of litter found:

• Bottle of Vodka

• Car registration plate

which means top trumps goes to the team that found.......

• Boxers shorts (hope you didn't pick them up without a litter picker!)

Delivering our bin bags to RHCC it was time to get ourselves back down the hill, this time with Stuart taking up back-marking duties. We took the scenic route back through Iffley and along Meadow Lane, with a game of sprint between the lamp posts as we approached the Roger Bannister track.

I'm sure some of you were going WAY faster than 4 minute mile pace, putting Roger to shame.

Fab plogging everyone! We'll be doing it all over again in West Oxford on Saturday, which is an extra session so that we can take part in OxClean's Spring Clean weekend, and then there will of course be our usual Wednesday evening Group Run from East Oxford Community Centre next week. You can sign up here.