Tonight's task was a real community event. We were helping a local councillor (Madhuri Bedi) with a playground clean to help the local kiddies enjoy a safe, clean area to enjoy. As ever, one of our GoodGym members Mabu was instrumental in making this event happen for us...thank you Mabu.

Before we go on and tell you about the task, let's talk about turning three!

Ha-pea birthday to us

This week marks our 3rd year of starting GoodGym Slough. I simply cannot believe how quickly this time has gone, how much we have achieved and how many lives and community groups we have helped support.

We've spent one and half years in a 'normal' world and the other half in a pandemic world. The pandemic months have seen us stop doing what we loved the most - our Group Runs, yet seen us grow and expand in so many ways. For those of you who like stats, this sums it all up

• 2018 - Good Deeds 314

• 2019 - Good Deeds 836

Then came the pandemic...

• 2020 - Good Deeds 1115

• 2021 (so far) - Good deeds 798

Suffice to say we will smash the 2020 good deeds tally by the end of 2021!

Let it slide...

GoodGym is more than a community of runners - it is now a community of walkers, cyclists and runners all who want to get fit and do something good back for our town. We could of taken a downwards slide during the start of lockdown 1, with us loosing our ability to meet up, run together and hang out, but we didn't. We put on our big girl/boy pants and started to help our community by making well-being calls to our vulnerable residents and shopping and prescription tasks to those shielding. And when the time was right, we were back out in the community with our Community Missions.

Swinging into the next phase

In July 2020, soon after our 2nd birthday, we started our Community Missions - capped sessions where we made our own way to the task. Boy were these popular! With so many charities and community groups needing our help, we were out in allotments, in church gardens, at recycling centres, charity shops doing something to help them re-open, re-start or just have a tidy up.

During this time we've had members reach 50 milestones to 100 milestones. Some have gone on to the 200's, 300's and even 400!

The GoodGym grit has always been there and we made sure our team had a focus and something to enjoy. We had endless virtual fitness sessions on the go as well as quizzes. Keeping in touch was important - hanging in zoom became a 'thing'.

Did you know?

We've covered over 27, 000 km's since we started in 2018!

That's the same distance as running to Darwin, Austrailia and back!

So once again, from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU to each and every GoodGym member in Slough for helping us to achieve all these milestones!

50 Club As well as our birthday celebrations it was also Gauri's 50th Good Deed today - well done Gauri, welcome to the Club!

Merry-go-round

Back to the task in hand. With the freedom to meet anytime, any day, any place for our group sessions - tonight's meet up was at Kederminster Park where did our welcome brief, task brief and warm up before heading out the 2km distance to Grampian Way park.

So off we went down this road, up that road, left here, right there until we eventually reached the park to find the local community already hard at work! This is what you call a community task. Councillor Bedi had put a shout out to the residents to help and/or provide equipment like brooms and brushes and wipes! And low and behold, there it all was. Well done Foxborough for really getting into the community spirit.

Brushing up on our techniques

It's been a while since I've had to stand in front of a group of people to sell the GoodGym story, but Madhuri wanted us to go on facebook live to tell the followers who we were - and I never shy away from a camera!

Soon we were all in full flow of the actual task. We paired off and took a section of the park each.

• Meera was on the biggest slide straight away! She had that piece of kit ship shape by the end

• Gauri was below deck giving the poles a once over whilst Sut focused on the ropes and made sure they were safe

• Sandy and Ruth were on the flat swing, the baby swing - or just any swing really - no monkeying around from these two

• Jean was our sweeping beauty whilst Pam and Jen brushed up on their piling skills (think Jen was just practising last week with her piles in readiness for today!)

• Mabu was in all corners of the play area - brushing here, sweeping there, with Kam was moss lady today, digging out all that green!

In 45 minutes we had helped to clear up 5 bags of debris, leaves, moss and litter off the play ground floor!

There was no hanging around tonight as we had birthday cake to enjoy, though we did enjoy a cold ice pop kindly given to us by a local resident before we set off.

A great task! And thank you for your hospitality Foxborough.

Child's Play

With a group of children at both parks as our captive audience (and there really was an audience as we warmed up in Kederminster park and then when we did the task in the Grampian Way park), so we took this opportunity to tell the families all about GoodGym for the adults and junior parkrun for the children! Some very keen kids eager to show us their running speed skills. Lets hope we get a few signups for both.