The runners of GoodGym Slough became guinea pigs this evening, as they welcomed new run trainer Amy from Windsor and Maidenhead and allowed her to practice her run leading skills on them. Amy briefly introduced the evening's activities and then handed over to Slough Run Trainer Manjit, who's local knowledge and super-organised annotated maps were essential for the leaflet dropping task ahead in support of Slough libraries.

Manjit also encouraged the group to reflect on how we can spread kindness in our community, inviting us each to pledge to perform a random act of kindness, which we wrote on recycled greetings cards.What would you pledge?

Guinea pigs clearly like group hugs

During the warm up the group made Amy feel really at home and were very game when she got them running around and started shouting numbers at them. Valentine's Day has been and gone, but Slough clearly still had lots of love to give, as Amy's instruction to get into groups was quickly interpreted as give massive group hugs!

Hopefully this made new member Mekaya feel very welcome too. Today was Mekaya's first group run, but she looked very at home in her red t-shirt and wasted no time getting stuck in.

We couldn't be-leaflet how cold it was

Tonight run out was a relatively short one to the Baylis area of Slough, where we then ran a bit more, distributing leaflets telling residents about the fab Spring Programme of events and exhibitions coming up at the Slough Libraries.

Did you know that Slough offers so many cultural and arts events at its local libraries, ranging from family events to events for young people to comedy nights for the grown-ups. As well as just going to the libraries to take out a book – the old fashioned way! Take a look at their latest online brochure here: https://www.slough.gov.uk/downloads/LIB-6380_Jan-Apr%202020.pdf

Jen and Ihfaz librarly broke a sweat as they lead the pack towards the 'drop zone', where we hoped to target schools' catchments.

On arrival, we split into twos and threes and headed off with stacks of leaflets to drop through letter boxes. Empty-handed runners returned to our meeting point in good time and Amy introduced the group to some unusual balances and a monkey swing Mexican wave to keep us from freezing. We also compared notes on our experience of the task, Roisin and Amy concluding that they would make poor burglars after a failed attempt at spotting Manjit's mum's house.

We then hot-footed it (or at least slightly-warmer-footed-it) back to base for our fitness session. The session was an interactive one with runners setting each other exercises to complete. Emily set the bar with high knees to start, we had squats in every direction, we enjoyed a lovely side stretch half way round to give our legs a break, and then just when we thought it was time to go home and curl up a good book, Amy surprised us with a plank. We then had a stretch (thanks Kam for keeping us balanced!) and a natter and headed home.

Coming up....a pancake sandwich?

Next Monday we work up an appetite for pancake day as we return to Sewak Housing to brush up on our painting skills. Sign up here

On Tuesday you can eat lots of pancakes at home... Then on Wednesday 26th lots of us will be getting a bonus group run fix at the launch of neighbouring GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead. Sign up here to help at the Maidenhead Community Allotment and to welcome lots of new runners to the fold!

More community love

We have a few more community missions on the system, so please do check them out. They are on Friday’s, Saturday’s and Sunday’s. https://www.goodgym.org/areas/slough/happenings/community-missions

Well done Amy on a great session and brilliant report! I think Windsor and Maidenhead are ready to rumble! Have a great week everyone... See you same time, same place next week... Manjit