It's our Birthday!

To celebrate GoodGym Oxford being 6 years old a bevy of GoodGymers got together at County Hall. Of course we had to include a Good Deed in our birthday celebrations (no Wednesday is complete without one), so we packaged up 3 boxes of old trainers to send to JogOn for repurposing and recycling. These had been collected up from friends, family and colleagues over the previous few weeks, saving them from going to landfill.

With 26 GoodGymers in attendance that task was complete in record time, leaving us the rest of the evening to chat over drinks and nibbles, reminiscing about the past 6 years and speculating about what the future might bring.

Our 6 year Good Deed count is 8038. Happy Birthday to Us!

Our intrepid team of Quizzers ventured to the Dodo Pub's newest Oxford venue, the Slow and Steady. The quiz followed the usual word patterns, palindromic answers, a music round, and a picture round. The bonus challenge to create a campaign post for a new political party revealed some hidden artistic talents and a dab hands at the strategic use of glitter. Unfortunately the whole thing took over three hours to finish, and no amount of pizza and Ben's birthday cake could make a night bus look appealing. But, I am reliably informed by the hardy few who toughed it out that we finished in a very respectable 3rd place.

There is some interest in getting a team together to tackle Puzzled Pint (https://puzzledpint.org/city/oxford-uk/) but it isn't bookable so people will need to solve the riddle to find the location and chance it.

We ventured to Osney to The Hollybush pub, with two teams prepared for pizza and quizzing. The usual mix of questions and topics popped up, along with medieval versions of pop songs, a picture round on the tallest celebrities, and guess the intro. We defended our reputation with a very respectable 3rd place for Red Thunder, and 1st place for Red Hot Quizzy Peppers. First prize was a £50 gift card, which was literally a giant playing card with 'gift card' written on it - we are yet to see if it is legal tender.

Any suggestions for other place to try out, or non-quiz socials, then let me know.

For anyone intrigued by the medieval music - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IzXed3gGgWW206d9vbL40

As in previous years, we were requested to help with Oxford's largest running event - Oxford Half. For some this meant forgoing the usual Saturday morning Parkrun (although Uni Parks ended up being unexpectedly cancelled anyway) to instead facilitate the running of thousands of entrants to the Oxford Half on Sunday. Equipped with hi-vis and caps (as Bethan says, "who doesn't love a freebie",) we were briefed on the process identical to yesteryear. 2 to a tablet, we made fast work of entrants scanning their QR codes, checking ID and delivering that fateful race number laden with the every important chip for their chip time - some of us appreciating the value of that chip from past events! With everyone buddied up, the process was slick and the queue never grew that large especially with Harvey from GoodGym Ealing directing and encouraging those in the queue to come on down as we were like cashiers in a Post Office. We were well-catered with snacks and lunch provided by the Motiv Sports Team to keep us fuelled for the 4 hour stint with some of us working so fast, our scanner ran out of battery - definitely not from practising Morse Code. The rain started to pour but under our tented shelter we persevered and before we knew it, 1pm struck and it was time to depart. Highlights included seeing friends we knew collect their numbers with glee and/or trepidation, numerous dogs (including one man carrying one in each hand), and chocolate/brioche/party rings for the sugar every GoodGymmer dreams to be surprised with on a Good Deed. A posthumous congratulations to everyone completing the Oxford Half and I imagine we'll be back next year for Oxford Half 2025!