With the clocks changing last weekend we're into dark evenings for the next few months. Sport England's This Girl Can campaign is continuing the "Let’s Lift The Curfew" campaign, launched in 2023, to showcase women’s stories and concerns around getting active outdoors in the darker months, as well as calling on wider society to acknowledge their role in making getting active outdoors safer for women.

This year, This Girl Can is looking to go bolder and bigger, so they are partnering with GoodGym to help transform the campaign into a nationwide movement that can raise awareness and take critical steps towards making outdoor exercise safer for women.

This week we met for a 1 mile run to our task location, with 5 of us trotting and chatting in the dark. Head and chest torches definitely help us feel safer in the dark, and group exercise is always more fun than solo running.

Once we got to OXSRAD and met the rest of the group we picked up where we left off a few weeks ago - painting the reception areas, corridor and studio to refresh the Disability Hub & Sports Centre. Some of our painting from last time got high praise, so we all tried to "Be More Bethan and Katie" this time round. Painting and chatting is a lovely mindful task, so we're looking forward to another session here in 2 weeks time.

Welcome to GoodGym Helen and Isobel - lovely to meet you both.

This Wednesday we had a very welcome indoor task! OXSRAD is Oxford's fully inclusive sports and recreation centre for all ages, open to disabled and non-disabled users. It aims to improve the physical health and mental wellbeing of all its users through fitness, recreation, rehabilitation and therapeutic activities.

The centre requested GoodGym's assistance in repainting their interior. The walls haven't been painted for decades, and the centre staff were finding it a bit overwhelming to try to do it all themselves.

Enter the GoodGym flash mob!

Tooled up with rollers, step ladders, and paint brushes we got painting in the studio, corridor, and main reception area. While some took approaches Michelangelo would be proud of, others preferred the "slip, slap, slop" approach. Special mention to Ben for the double roller action! All techniques turned out to have their place, and we got loads done before downing tools at 7:30pm.

We'll be back a couple more times through the autumn. Good work team!

Welcome to GoodGym Chloe!

Our first Wednesday group run of 2020 brought some new faces to GoodGym – Mary, Stephanie, Lucy, Gemma. welcome to you all - and also Peggy the dog!

We jogged over to Marston, with a short paws outside the Up In Arms Pub to do some star jumps, but not fur long as we had to get to OXSRAD. Once there we met Mark, who is having a bit of a ruff time as he is injured at the moment. A big thank you also to Mark’s daughter, Emily Lygo who works at OXSRAD and didn’t mind us collaring her to hound her with questions!

We split into groups and cleaned the place from top to tail! We cleaned equip-mutt in the gym, crash mats in the sensory room, tables and chairs in the reception area, scrubbed down some wheelchairs and cleaned the kitchen. A glimpse into the aerial silks room had us grinning from ear terrier.

On the way back we went daschund through the streets of Oxford, doing some fartlek between lamp posts (but not getting too com-pet-itive) and some squat jumps (with Gloria as the winner).

Passers by might have thought we were barking mad! We also had a large enough group to all speak to somebody we have never spoken to before, which meant the run flew by and we barely noticed that it was raining cats and dogs.

That’s enough of this shaggy dog *story, I hope you all *(labr)adored this session as much as I did!

-- Footnote, Peggy noticed her owner Stu has now got 16 Good Deeds!! which means he can join up to TASKFORCE (as can any runner who has done 10 or more good deeds!). She hounded him in the pub to promise to do this ASAP!! <3 <3