The weather held out for us this evening. The August sun actually made an appearance and we had a decent turnout for one of our regular and favourite task owners – The Parvaaz Project. It had been a good a couple of months since we last visited them so we were expecting the green outdoor space to have been rooting for us to come back and do a bit of weed removal. Luckily we all dig a bit of gardening and weeding so were keen to crack on!

After discussing all things Goodgym, we headed outside and did one of Sut’s highly practised junior parkrun warm ups before cutting through the park to take a more scenic route through Slough.

Branching out? Leaf it out! Bin there done that!

On arrival we had the access code to get into the car park, however we didn’t have the key to the shed with the tools so we had to improvise and find ways to do the tasks.

Branches were used to sweep up; twigs were collected; litter was picked; weeds were pulled.

The car park was really weedy and did need a good pluck. Ruth, Kam, Darren and Antonio said ‘no problem – leaf it with me’ as they whittled through the thorny weeds.

Whilst in the main garden space, Jean, Harsha, Sut, Gauri and Sara were still getting over my duvet day (they were just envious!) and started to branch out with the improvised broom they had created.

Sut even created a rubbish Olaf (imagine a black bin bag full with twig arms sticking out)…To our shock she actually took off her top to try and recreate a Goodgym Olaf! Darren sussed her right out though…she was trying to show off her abs…didn’t impress Darren though…he’d rather have kebabs over abs! What a fun-gi he is!

Emma was on litter pick duty…she found the usual suspects and our first ever calculator – You can count on us to make sure every litter bit counts.

The time of our lives

With the garden space all cleared off leaves and tidied up (10 bag fulls of garden waste), we had the perfect platform (a stage) to perform a few of our favourite dance moves

Darren did a bit of Dirty Dancing with all the Single Ladies (Please Denise DO NOT read this report tonight…it really wasn’t his fault!)

Antonio showed us his ballroom moves…I nearly wet my plants when he asked me to dance…I’m more a spruce springsteen type of gal!

I just ‘pulled’

With the task complete and two nearby parks with the outdoor gym equipment and with Harsha in tow…it could only mean one thing….some kind of hanging/pull ups were in order. A few of us are doing a 1000 pull ups challenge, be it full, assisted, Aussie or dead hangs and were trying to make up our daily numbers.

Funny how it was Kam who is not on any challenge who was able to dead hang the longest time – a whopping 2 minutes (I’m sure you get a free prize at Alton Towers for that!).

Just a mental note for anyone who likes to make fitness suggestions when Harsha joins us…DON’T…just don’t…or you will be hanging, pulling, pushing, wheel barrowing, piggy backing or L hanging. It’s really best just to keep quiet…Just kidding Harsha…we loved our mini fitness session tonight (even my epic fall).

Upcoming runs

We are back at Wexham Park Hospital next week for an outdoor space tidy up. It’s a longer run distance of 8km total. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/car-park-community-clean-up

One of our regular runners and task force member Emily has also sorted out a community mission to take place on Sunday 25th August. Please join her if you can https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/clearing-an-overgrown-community-space-for-a-cohesion-event

Have a great week Manjit