Happy Birthday Roger Bannister!

What a difference a week makes!

In a massive contrast with last week's wind and rain we were treated to a glorious spring evening for the last Wednesday before the clocks go forward.

Meeting outside the Iffley Road Sports Centre - site of Roger Bannister's original sub-4 minute mile - on what serendipitously turned out to be Roger Bannister's birthday, we split off into walking and running groups.

Lead by Katie, the walkers set off for a bucolic loop of Aston's Eyot, complete with deer sightings and a beautiful sunset.

Meanwhile the runners were put through their paces by Bethan and Ben - our amazing new Run Leaders. Dodging fellow track users we completed a warm up loosely modelled on a Junior parkrun warmup (if it's good enough for a 5 year old it's good enough for me...) then split the group down the middle for the main session. Ben's group completed a pyramid efforts session; gradually increasing the effort distance and decreasing the recovery distance then working back down to the original distances. Meanwhile Bethan's group took on sets of 300m efforts with 100m walk/jog recovery intervals.

Suitably sweaty we managed to all finish at roughly the same time, which is one of the major benefits of running on the track - everyone can work to their own effort level. With a mixture of experienced and less experienced runners, people who haven't been able to run for a few weeks etc, running around in circles is a great way to keep the group together.

With perfect timing we exited the sports centre just as the walkers got back and all headed up the footpath for a few drinks at The Oxford Blue.

This was Amy's last session before moving to Cambridge, where shockingly there is no GoodGym! Good luck Amy!