Sarah McFadden

Tonight's GoodGym task was "Pick own Adventure" style.

The Rules:
* Teams must be back at base by 7:30pm or points are docked.
* Teams must get at least 3 items from each list.
* Finds must be photographed as proof.
* You can go anywhere within the ring road as long as you’re back by 7:30pm.

The items to hunt down:
LITTER PICK:
Crisp packet
Cigarette butt
Coffee cup (will allow just lid)
Energy drink can
Fast food wrapper
Face mask
Glass bottle
Alcohol container
Plastic bag (dog poo bag permitted)
Piece of clothing – 5 BONUS points for pants

WILD CARDS:
Selfie at a GoodGym Task Location (a point for each one)
Number 48 (we were the 48th GG area)
A pictorial representation of GoodGym – get creative!
Christmas Decorations
Gold Letter box
Blue Plaque

Strategic thinking was all the rage tonight, with tactical approaches from 'run fast around lots of task locations' to 'focus on the litter', with most opting for 'just try & find ALL the things'. An impressive amount of litter was collected, many miles walked and run, numerous GG task locations and Oxford landmarks visited, and so many photos submitted as evidence that there were too many to upload to the report. I especially enjoyed the creativity shown in the 'pictorial depiction of GoodGym' - gold champagne bottles, the logo spelt out in leaves, bodies twisted into logo shapes.

Bragging rights to Samantha, Sarah, Bryony, and Dan who took the win with 25 points and a Full House of litter items and wild cards, and were also first back to base. Very efficient scavenging!

Kudos to 2nd place team Matt, Sarah, and Bethan, who made it to the most GoodGym task locations -12! - and to the 3rd place team lead by Holly who also got a Full House.

Prizes were awarded by the Lord Mayor of Oxford, although apparently he'll only make a speech if you give him advance warning.

Event number #39, A beautiful sunny morning at Florence park in contrast to our Halloween storms last week! 41 kids sped around our course this week, well done to our top 5 kids who smashed it at 9mins or under

• 1 Nia PARRY-SPRING 08:08

• 2 Dillon THORNDYKE 08:27

• 3 Alban PARRY-SPRING 08:52

• 4 Benjamin PARRY-SPRING 08:53

• 5 Harry THORNDYKE 09:00

view full results here

GoodGym helped Marshall this week and 11 GoodGymers helped top up the marshals this week to a fantastic 23 (which is only 1 less than the 24 record!!). Shout out to Ruth for her first First Timers Briefing and Ben for leading another brilliant warm up. Trev was Run Director and got his 25 ParkRun Volunteer milestone! If anyone wants to volunteer next week, or in the weeks ahead message Kieran at florencepark-juniors@parkrun.com or let me know.. Thank you all!!

Well done to these children who got milestones for their runs over the last weeks

• Hamish Cross 1/2 marathon

• Phoebe Standing 1/2 marathon

• Alice Monach marathon!

More photos are Here

Did you spot the Winnie the pooh chalkings from Jane? Thanks to Amy for the photos (who is now our Parkrun Event support Ambassador). AND Hi to Charlotte to her first GoodGym task, and welcome back Thomas you are both very welcome!

7 GoodGymers helped Oxford Round Table put on their annual Firework display in South Park! Last year there was no display due to COVID so there was defiantly some excitement coming to the Park again, and quite a bit of litter came with that too!!

Amongst highlights we found an Oyster card, A Wimbledon wrist band, lots of strange plastic disks! A Lost Loyalty card (that knew it was lost before we picked it up!), a "not pants" scarf, LOTS of plastic beer pint cups, and usual cans, packets, bottles and tissue paper! We has a good game of "Leaf or Litter" a classic if you've not played it, especially in low light, and we split into teams to cover the food areas and fairground (which was by far the messiest.. at least at first!)

Of course there will be a big clear up tomorrow also but we had a great presence as the bins were minimal to say the least!! Many were grateful of seeing us walking round

We also got an exclusive task to be Bouncers!! Well Trev specifically (as there was only one Hi-Viz), but Ruth had a go too and even stopped some rather big men from coming though before they rather be-musingly told us that "they" were security!! ;).

We tried some litter picker dancing in the firework buildup as that was rather later than expected (something we will work on in Strictly come Litter Pick.. perhaps on Wednesday in Rose Hill?!). But was great to see the display in all its glory again 12,000 fireworks were lit and an epic bonfire

Welcome to GoodGym Lewis, first task! and well done to Mark for Opening the show too

So....it's back to loitering in the car park outside the food bank in the dark! How many of you had a major sense of deja vue last night?!

Oxford Mutual Aid runs a food bank out of the Richard Benson Hall on the Cowley Road. It is the only 7-days-a-week food support available in Oxford, and offers both regular support to households and emergency provision. Overall food parcels are sent out to over 300 households in Oxford every week. Last week, for example, 368 parcels were prepared and supplied, which helped over 1100 adults, children and babies. Hundreds of prepared meals were also sent out under the Kitchen Collective programme.

We've been a weekly fixture on the Oxford Mutual Aid volunteer rota for a year now, but last night was something a little different - Oxford Mutual Aid called in the GoodGym flash mob for a blitz through tasks at the food bank which are usually difficult to get done with such a busy weekly schedule of food parcel picking.

Team work makes the dream work. Never a truer word spoken!

We:
* Took bulk boxes of pasta and portioned them out into 500g servings.
* Took the 10kg bags of rice and scooped them into 500g portions.
* Broke down the cardboard boxes, turning cardboard mountain into an orderly stack.
* Portioned out hundreds of nappies into individual packs.
* Bagged up tea bags.
* Portioned up sultanas.
* Restocked the shelves.
* Labelled up previously portioned pasta.
* Put away donations.
* Sorted out the kitchen - cleaning fridges and floors, throwing out the food waste, getting all the fruit and veg deliveries in order.
* Swept up in the main hall.
* Helped drivers load up their food parcels for delivery.
* Delivered 2 food parcels.

We also took the opportunity to rotate through training on how to prepare food parcels with Sarah, the Hall Manager. It was a great opportunity as a refresher for those who pack parcels regularly, and a helpful introduction to those who haven't taken on that task at the food bank previously. I hope you'll all feel more confident having had some dedicated training time.

After the last food parcel had been loaded up, the last box of pasta decanted, and we'd nearly run out of nappy space we called it a night. There's so rarely time for the tasks we took on during a normal week at the food bank, so an hour or so of our time makes a big difference to how easy it is to prep food parcels for the coming days. Since it seemed to work well we'll do this task again before Christmas

Bethan lead a breakaway group of runners on a 5k trot post-task, including a sprint-jog lamp post workout along Meadow Lane with added llama spotting. Thank you Bethan!

We had a quartet of newcomers to GoodGym tasks this evening, so a warm welcome to Alison, Luca, Ross, and Thomas.

This evening’s task was a double whammy. Goodgym power was needed to clear and tidy the Toad Distillery yard and also clear ivy from the railings at the top of South Park – revisiting the scene of our very first task back in 2019!

A group of us huffed and puffed (I mean ran in an athletic manner) up the hill to the distillery, meeting Bryon and the rest of the team there. The register featured “what would your desert island drink be” with answers ranging from the sensible (filtered, safe-to-drink water) to the decadent (ruby port, champagne). We then split into two groups and got to work. The team headed up by Mark (Lord Mayor and tool breaker extraordinaire) tackled the distillery yard sweeping up mountains of autumn leaves and tidying up around the outside seating, as well as planting daffodil bulbs.
The other team headed out to South Park. South Park in Oxford is a gorgeous park with fantastic views over Oxford – Dreaming Spires galore. It is also a busy cut through from town to campus for a lot of the Oxford Brookes students. With the evenings getting darker we needed to do something to make the sight-lines clearer and safer for all involved. We stripped LOADS of ivy off the railings and did a litter pick along the lane. This week’s random spot was not the usual scattering of pants but a beautiful, slightly sparkly, toadstool which we left in-situ to grow.

After all our hard and dusty work, we headed back into The Oxford Artisan Distillery for a G&T and a lovely chat and catch up.

The gin was delicious and it was so fab to be able to relax and chat to everyone after a task. Thank you Bryon!!

Welcome Dan - good to have you along!

Thanks for the report title Sarah and to Bethan for the write up.