It was back to school for the Goodgym Oxford crew this week: our mission, should we choose to accept it (we always choose to accept it), was to help get the early years garden space at Larkrise Primary School weeded, cleaned, swept, and ready for the start of term on Monday.

It's 1.5km from our base to Larkrise Primary School, so we set off through Cowley with our newest Task Force member Mark back-marking, and in only 10 minutes we were at the primary school gates receiving our task instructions from Holly.

The Reception class at Larkrise have a brilliant outdoor space, complete with Bug Hotel, Fairy Garden, Mud Kitchen, and Vegetable Patch (hands off those courgettes and strawberries!!). All of the growing spaces needed weeding, we also had leaves and twigs to sweep, chairs and tables to clean, wooden pallets and rubbish to move, and the most popular task of all - sprucing up the Mud Kitchen!

With no concerns at all about getting wet and muddy several Goodgymers made a beeline for the mud, proving that you're never to old to enjoy making mud pies.

While Mike weeded the Pansy Patch, Bethan and Elissa discovered many hidden treasures as they pruned the Fairy Garden with scissors: rubber duck, zebra, gorilla, but only 1 fairy. Alex, Ben and Tim got a good upper body workout by moving pallets then thoroughly sweeping the playground. Not to be outdone by the finds in the Fairy Garden, Team Veg Patch (Julia, Mark, Alison) unearthed a car, solved the conundrum of how to get the giant sunflower to stand up straight, and gave the area a thorough weeding and sweeping. Only a few strawberries found their way into tummies; they'd be over-ripe by Monday anyway! Over in the Mud Kitchen Sarah, Olivia and Trev scrubbed up well, getting a little soggy but surprisingly un-muddy in the process, roping in Mike to hose down the chairs once the mud was dealt with.

And - Ta Dah! - in less than 45 minutes we'd completed our task list.

Holly, our task owner for the evening, commented that the same work might have taken her weeks to manage to do on her own, so our visit really made a difference. Unable to resist the play equipment (did anyone say 'big kids?') we had to pose for a group photo on the rope bridge, then off to the Roger Bannister Track we went.

We're really grateful that Oxford University Sports Centre allow us to jump onto their track for 10 minutes or so when it works with the route on our way back from our tasks. It's brilliant to have access to these iconic sports facilities and it's a joy to run on a track - no traffic to worry about, a lovely springy surface, everyone can work at their own pace without getting separated from the group.

Who can resist running a mile at the place where the first 4-minute-mile was run? Not us!

Continuing our teamwork the track workout was relay-style: grab a partner and take it in turns to run a full lap of the track as fast as you can, recovering while your partner runs their lap, then off you go again, until you've run 4 laps between you. We had some impressive turns of speed, and everyone got their legs tingling and lungs burning. Even our Goodgym 'parasite/squidge' got wriggly.

A short jog back to base and stretches, and we were done for another Wednesday.

Welcome to Goodgym Elissa and Alex - good to meet you both!

With chances of rain set around 50-50 for the evening, there was advance speculation on whether we would be raking hay while the sun did not shine, and probably while the rain soaked and the wind howled.

We should've had more faith in the weather gods though, as 6pm dawned if not sunny, then at least not apocalyptic.

Welcoming Mark and Olivia to our Goodgym crew, and admiring Helen's 50 Tshirt, on tour from Hammersmith and Fulham, we rattled through a bumper edition of news - Race for Life Pretty Muddy 5k volunteering, Oxford Half Water Station volunteering, post-work Community Mission next Friday, Garland of Joy for Trev for his 10th Good Deed!

It's an unavoidable fact that when headed for Rose Hill some uphill running is going to be required. Dancing around the Meadow Lane puddles we turned the corner and gamely started the climb to Iffley (eyes to the left for our beautifully weeded wall at Iffley Glebe). This is the hill route with a kick in the tail: Just when you think you're done it's UP again! You would never have thought Oxford was a city of flat running routes, as we all arrived at Rivermead Nature Park barely out of puff.

Ed and Andy from BBOWT were there to greet us in the freshly-cut meadow area. Tooling up with rakes and pitch forks we got to work clearing the cut grass. As first to arrive Trev was awarded the scythe, a position of responsibility that drew a certain amount of envy (note to self; find more scything tasks!), while Bethan demonstrated a new skill as a toad whisperer.

Watch your feet - the toads have come out to join the Goodgym group. Don't tread on our new friends!

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes.
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.

Thanks to Tim for the Kipling reference!

Half an hour of raking and we had cleared the main meadow area of cut grass, so upped the tempo to speed-raking, thanks to some motivational cheer-leading from Aoife, in order to get the boggy corner sorted in the last 5 minutes.

Upper-bodies worked out, tools stashed, team photo taken, and it was time to run again. The promise of a downhill run all the way back might have been a little white lie, as we started with a climb, but before anyone could catch their breath to complain we were swooping down past Iffley Church and onto the Thames Path.

Pitter patter pitter patter, over the lock, past the geese, over the humpback bridge, past the rowers, up onto Donnington Bridge, under Bethan and Aoife's human archway (hope the random members of the public got a little joy out of joining in), popping out on Meadow Lane for some more puddle-stomping. We can't run Meadow Lane without a fartlek session (tee hee, she said fart!!), so it had to beall along the lamposts; one sprint, one easy, one sprint, one easy etc, reconvening at Jackdaw Lane for an easy jog back to base, muddy legs inspection, and stretches.

Next week is a 2 Goodgym session week, so don't forget to check the list of Oxford happenings, and if it's your first time signing up for a Community Mission just double check that you're actually signed up after reading through the training information - you have to go back to the listing and click 'sign up' after you complete the training step.

See you next week!