Tonight's task was our first indoor paint job! And with a new task owner.

We louvre being able to help local community groups with Monet for nothing jobs which really does impact their environment.

For us, it’s a great way to go for a group run and do something surreal for a community group that needs our help. A bit like Charlies Angels or Challenge Anneka! So thank you to Sewak Housing for our task tonight.

It’s good to talk

So much going on this week and so much to say (nothing changes there!)..so let’s start with what happened last week… Our girl Sandy delivered the most epic speech you will ever hear from a Goodgymer on ‘what Goodgym means to them’ at the 10 year celebrations event last Thursday in London.

I won’t lie, I did shed a tear or two (as did Emily…though Ricky kept his Kool and kept the gang in check). It was such a funny, from the heart type of speech that nearly everyone there stood in line to congratulate Sandy on it afterwards…

We are just so proud of how GG Slough has so positively contributed to the ongoing success of Goodgym. Goodgym is 10 years old this week and what an amazing story/journey it has been.

It’s our birthday so lets paint the town red!

So 10 years on and the concept that grew from delivering a newspaper by our founder Ivo to a local neighbour has grown into a movement that is so positive and rewarding for everyone involved.

To celebrate #GG10, each Goodgym area this week will be taking photos of their local group with a landmark of their town.

For me, Slough in party-icular means many things. It’s my birth town, the town I was educated in, got my first job in, got married in and now the town that educates my children. People have a perception of Slough but let’s not ‘paint’ a bad ‘picture’ of our town…it really is an amazing place with so much to offer. Even David Brent (aka Ricky G) thinks our town is the best… so much so he wrote a song about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mlevv9oFuA) plus we have our very own Rickyyyyyyyy!

So our group photo tonight was around a theme over a landmark!

Slough Means Business

Did you know?

• Slough Trading Estate is the largest estate in a single provide ownership in Europe?

• Over 500 businesses are based in the Estate

• Top blue chip companies like Centrica, O2, Yell, Virgin Media, Akzo Nobel and MARS are all in our town

• Our trading estate provides employment for over 20, 000 people!

Get the ‘picture’…Slough is a great town.. So our photo represents that Slough is a mean machine when it comes to Commerce.

We’re like one big organism, one big animal, yeah? The guys upstairs on the phone, they’re the mouth. The guys down here, the hands. I’m probably the humour’

Yes David - we totally agree!

When you gotta Van Gogh you gotta Van Gogh

Ok, so let’s get back to the business at hand…going to help a local community group with a freshen up! 18 runners ventured through the streets of Slough town heading towards Wexham for our task. Thank you to Sut, Rickyyyyy and Emily for back marking and a very warm welcome to Naomi and Ifhaz on their first group runs with us.

Sometimes, when you get to task, things aren’t always quite as you expected. But that’s no issue for us…although we needed a pre prepped room in order to crack on with the painting, we did have to spend a few extra minutes getting the lounge and hallway prepped.

With so many of us out tonight we did have to use our wits to ensure everyone had a task to do. With limited rollers, Ali had a stroke of genius when he realised that using a roller brush with no roller handle was actually a great way to get the wall covered!

Harsha tried to brush off all the remarks she was getting about her paint in a plate improvisation.

Jean had Sut’s back in another ingenious way of making sure Sut was safe whilst masking the hallway window frame.

And Harry’s height was in high demand as he was pulled from wall to wall to do all the high areas.

All in all, for the time we had on site, we did manage to get some level of coverage on the walls – we might have been a bit sketchy and a little bit shady, however, we did our best and plan on coming back in 2 weeks time to finish it all off.

#SuperSaturday

On Saturday we will be doing a community clean up at Farm Lane. So please do sign up and I promise there might even be cake involved. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/improving-something-somewhere-in-slough

Have a great week

With is being the Summer holidays we had a smaller than usual group last night. We were off to Wexham Park Hospital to give the outdoor space a tidy up. Wexham Park Hospital is one of our regular task owners and it’s also one of our longer run distances of 4km each way.

A warm welcome to Andy and Angela who joined us on their first session with us tonight.

So after the welcome brief, we headed outside for some dymanic stretches before easing into our outbound run. Thank you to Ricky and Harsha for back marking.

Litter and you’re rubbish

On arrival at Wexham, I collected the tools from Mike’s office and gave the team the formal training they needed – not that they needed it – you can easily pick it up as you go along!

We paired up for safety and ease of undertaking the task and headed out in different directions to see who could collect the most amount of rubbish.

Our runners know how to fight dirty! They came back with 4 bags of the usual suspects.

A gem from Jean

Each week I ask the runners to hit me with their best puns for the report. Well this week we have an absolute gem from Jean…

If you’ve rubbish to clear, then

Goodgym is here

To help keep Slough tidy for all..

Armed with bin bags and gloves and buckets and spades

We’ll soon make a start on the mess that’s been made

Our talents are endless

We work with a smile

To clear playgrounds and parklands and rivers and ponds

And anything else that needs working on

We’ve dished out food for the homeless in Slough

And at Christmas wrapped parcels

Put baubles on tress

The list is just endless – so do not despair

For GOODGYM is here and we will take care!!

Upcoming Events

Next week is another bank holiday Monday and I will be on holiday (yah!), but that doesn’t mean there is no task or running…oh no…Run Leader Sut Yee will be taking on her maiden group run. Please note that the start location will be at Upton Court Park at 18.30.

Sut Yee has an action packed session planned for you seen as it’s our Team GB x Goodgym week next week - so please do go along and support her. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/litter-pick-the-river

On Sunday we have a community mission which task force member Emily will be leading. Details below…if you are free please come along…No running involved in this one…just the feel good factor of the task.. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/clearing-an-overgrown-community-space-for-a-cohesion-event

This evening it was our 1st year anniversary group run and task. And who better to work with tonight other than our very first task owner Claire from the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust.

It's amazing to think that one year ago we launched with 29 new people joining us on our first ever task. Some of these guys are still with us today. But today we had a massive 30 runners turn up! Great to have Liv, our GG trainer from Ealing join us tonight – thank you for coming. And a very warm welcome to Jill on her first session with us.

All I can really say about the past year is that I have LOVED every Monday evening. Spending it with what truly are some of the nicest, funniest, good-hearted people you will ever meet.

‘Alone, we can do so little, together, we can do so much’

I love the diversity of runners that we have in Slough. Our team consists of new graduates; experienced runners to some who have hardly run at all; runners in their 20;s, 30;s, 40’s; 50’s, 60’s and even one runner in her 80’s; we have runners with young families to runners with older children and 3 Goodgym babies will be born this year too! Whatever their reason to run and do good is, all I can say that I am truly grateful for their ongoing commitment and support to Goodgym Slough.

So in our 1st year of running and doing good we have completed 819 good deeds (around 350 hours of voluntary work) and helped 22 different community groups in Slough. We’ve trained 3 runners to become Run Leaders and 6 as Task Force team members and slowly but surely we are making progress with coach runs and missions. Can’t wait to see what our second year holds for us.

Toad-ally awesome birthday task

An environmental clean-up of a stream to give the wildlife a chance to thrive, building an insect home, log clearance and a litter pick were the tasks of the day.

And really only task owner Claire could be so accommodating of such a big group tonight – Thank you Claire!

So after the usual welcome brief, we headed outside so Run Leader Sut Yee could do a warm up with the team.

Run Leaders Darren and Ricky then took the team out for a little run around the park whilst Claire, Sut, Denise, Louisa and I got the tools ready for the task. We then divided into four teams:

• The waders
• The diggers
• The loggers
• The pickers

Ace of wades

The waders are always a hit…wearing oversized onesies is quite fashionable in Slough so Sandy, Emily, Antonio, Sara, Harsha, Liv, Jenni and Lucy litter-alley could not wait to don their waders, collect their pickers and started to clear the Salt Hill stream of litter. And what a task they had!

Can you dig it…yes you can

The diggers who were bugging us the most, were sent off on a hive of activity to dig the insect homes. Mo (who actually hates digging) was on digging duty alongside Gauri, Jean and Kam. The aim of the holes were to fit the bigger logs to create a tree like climbing area for insects to thrive in. It was ground breaking stuff.

Log In Log Out

And the loggers worked out a log-ical method of collecting the logs.

Judging by the state of Harry’s t-shirt, this was no mean task. It required skill and co-ordination. Pam and Jas had a great technique going. They used a log in, log out method to prevent bumping into each other….And the team were tree-umphant in completing their task. Harry, used a cave man style, whilst Emma used her rugby skills and scrummed them into position.

Litter bugs me

The pickers were on a mission to clear as much rubbish as they could and they actually did go down that alley way – litter-alley! Tim, Meera and Nisha tackled that alley way, whilst Jen, Ruth, Jill, Denise and Louisa refused to give up and picked up every litter bit of trash they could find.

As luck would hive it, with so many of us tonight, the tasks were done in no time. Just check out the photo of the amount of rubbish we collected! Over 15 bag fulls!

It’s a bit swarm

As it was such a lovely swarm evening, we thought a nice quiz on all that knowledge we had on Goodgym was in order.

Quiz Master Manjit divided the groups into 2 teams with Run Leaders Ricky and Darren heading them up.

There was an ulterior motive for playing this game – remember last week when Sut Yee was soaked by Darren and Ricky? Well, today was pay-back time.

The losing team leader – in this case, both the Run Leaders! were soaked to the bone in a very fair and orderly water gun flight.

Life is what you bake it

To finish off the evening we had to have cake! I did offer to bake a cake, but for some reason Darren said no and Meera and Sandy insisted it must be a cake box cake!

So we headed into the centre for cake, pakoras and samosas! Thank you Lucy for baking the homemade blueberry muffins and Sut Yee’s aunty for the banana cakes.

I was so touched (the tears showed that!) by the video clip footage of everyones well wishes. Honestly, I cannot tell you what those messages mean to me. I do what I do because I love helping others and to know that this has somehow positively impacted so many of you means so much.

Have a fantastic week and see you at next week’s task.

This evening we were back out delivering leaflets for Slough Libraries and Cultures department at Slough Borough Council. With our welcome brief and warm up complete (thanks Sut for leading the warm up), we decided to take a different route into Langley today – a novel idea as running up past Tesco and Sainsbury’s only makes us hungry for (lie)-brie…

Plus we wanted more locals to see us run through town looking all fine in our red t-shirts (we actually do get approached to ask who we are and what we are doing)…and its always a great turn up for the books when a member of the public then googles us and registers for a group run.

Thank you Ruth, Sandy, Ricky and Sut Yee for back marking duties today. And Chrissy for walk leading part of the task tonight.

A library is an early version of the World Wide Web!

Isn’t it just! No need to be hush hush anymore in a library…they’ve moved with the times – it was bound to happen.

We are very lucky in Slough to have an amazing new library, The Curve. There is a wide array of activities and performances that take place here and at the some of the other libraries. The one in Britwell is also really impressive. Definetly book mark these for trips with the kids during the summer holidays.

Lets make shhh happen

So we arrived at Upton Court Park to meet Nisha who had kindly agreed to bring the box of leaflets to us (I like my spine so didn’t wish to break it with the heavy load) so an alternative delivery method was needed.

Our areas of focus was around Ditton Academy in Upton, so with 18 of us running today, we split up into smaller teams and headed out to the local streets to deliver the leaflets.

The team tonight used every trick in the book to take on the shorter distance…Team Nisha won the toss and covered Quaves Road whilst Team Darren took on the estate near Ditton Academy.

The task itself didn’t take us too long today…with 18 eager beavers on board tonight.

We did however get to do our own rendition of Abbey Rd cover shot, took on the #loveparks of Slough, covering Salt Hill, Upton Court Park and Lascelles Park…as well as our own photo shoot against the formidable graffiti near The Curve Library undertaken by Aik Saath…Amazing talents in Slough

Girls just wanna hang fun

As part of our fitness session today we decided to see if we could beat our dead hang times from the last time we did the same leaflet drop task – what a coincidence hey!

Well done to Lucy for hanging for the longest time…and to everyone else for giving the exercise a go…

Upcoming runs:

Next weeks task is a corker! We will be getting into kayak’s on the Jubilee River to clear the river bed of litter. I have had to cap this run so please book it soon if you want to come along. I may need to make the meet up time at 18:00, however will confirm during the week to those registered for the run. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/fancy-a-trip-along-the-river

And don’t forget to come along to our 1st year anniversary task https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/one-year-birthday-waders-n-wellies

Have a great week