OG's to Newbies and everyone else in between

It's our 6th birthday ... I don't feel 6 years older than when I first started doing GoodGym! Maybe it's the GG vibe that keeps us young?!! But what keeps us young is all the love we get from being in this group. And OMG I am blown away that sooooo many of you came this evening to help celebrate our 6th birthday! I really was only expecting the 10 that signed up to be there so when I saw another 10 mysteriously appear behind the church doors...it was like a devine intervention! Thank you to you all for making the effort to come along tonight.

Five going on Six

This past year we have as always achieved so much. We won an award at the Slough CSV #OneSlough Awards for our Innovative Ways for helping the community. We celebrated Jean's 90th birthday. We've had new task owners like Global Education Trust and Raggy Rd Allotments as well as our usuals. We've formed new friendships. We've had new members from the refugee community join us and sadly we've lost a few too. We battled the Bibby (and won!). Ricky finally got his 100th!. Jen hit 450 plus!; Ruth served her century (tonight); Sut soared to 400; Pam ploughed to over 370 and Sara smashed out over 260, Sandy succeeded with nearly 230 and Helen hacked out 77 heading towards her 100th! We karaoked at Christmas; have been frequent flyers and litter heroes and had allot of fun digging around. We've networked and insta-lly promoted GG as soon as the task has been done. We Beat-the Boat but still have The Big Half, Berlin and Vitality to smash!

There is always so much going on in the small yet compacted town that is Slough. And we've collected over 100 bags of rubbish around Slough since our last birthday!

We started the evening doing our usual. Meeting up Upton Court Park and making our way down to our task location of St Mary's Church (with the little surprise at the Church). Our task was to do a bit inside and a bit outside. Inside we had Sandy, Abdul, Roisin, Ruth and Pam sweeping, dusting and wiping whilst everyone else were outside either litter picking or cutting back overgrowth. With our usual grace we got through the tasks fairly swiftly, leaving enough time for cake....

But as with any special event we did have a twist.

Goodlympics

I don't know about you but I love the Olympics and watch as many events as I can. So whilst I was watching the ladies Rugby last night I came up with the idea of doing our very own Olympic events. Luckily I have 3 very eager helpers in my household who designed some of the games, drew out the signs and even made us an Olympic flame

It's never good to be too prepared

At home, I had prepped a sheet of paper outlining each person signed up (the good ones who signed up!) with a partner and a little Olympic style game. But when you get 10 others turn up (the bad ones for not signing up..but oh so good to see them!), I had to throw my paper away and improvise..

So in the end we had:

• Runners Beans We had Sara, Pam, Gauri and Meera on bean bags races. Pam showed so much grace as she eloquently balanced the bean bag on her head whilst walking round the war memorial without it falling off her head even once! Gold standard right there;

• N'Sync were Jenny ,Sandy, Ruth and Roisin on a synchronized swim routine. And wow how good were they! They could (just maybe) give Tom and Noah a few tips??;

• The Happy Hoppers were Harsha,Keira ,Chrissy, Agnija, Jen and Devajani. They gave us an entertaining minute of their show jumping skills using litter pickers! What style; what class!;

• Bean Poles were Abdulaziz, Peter, Ricky and Jean on bean bag throws. Ricky took an early lead closely followed by Abdul, but Jean stole the show with her sideways throw!

Each team displayed excellent execution, flare and skill. Team GB doesn't know it's missing some key players from Slough over in Paris

Flaming 'ell

We ended the night with the Goodlympic flame being passed from member to member as it makes it's way (slowy...might take it 4 years) to LA. Great solo efforts by all!

Ruth's 100th

Huge well done to Ruth on achieving her 100th Good Deed tonight! Ruth has been a founder member and supporter of ours since we started and we love having her along whenever she is free. Well done Ruth.

And then there was cake! Thank you to Helen for baking such delicious cup cakes and to everyone for being such good sports in all my mad games.

Thank you all so much for making another birthday event an enjoyable one.

So as we approach the end of the year it’s always great to get a festive task and we can always rely on The Artful Hub and Eva as we have such great chemis-tree!

With a couple of members running a bit late today I set Meera, Jean, Kam and Gauri off to find the unit we were working in. I thought

Yule be fine

But I was wrong…

A few phone calls later and we all had success! Sandy, Jen and I arrived just as Team A found the unit.

Eva gave us the task brief and like the little elves we are we got to work.

Lauren and Jen were feeling pine so they took on the Christmas tree challenge.

The rest of the team took to dressing the tables with ornaments… less is more sometimes (I can still see Meera’s disapproval as we pranced around with little trinkets!).

It’s good to treat yo’elf (I know they are getting worse aren’t they!) but wait there’s myrrh!

After doing a fabulous job even if we say so our-elves! We did a mini fitness session which I don’t think impressed anyone but me… ho ho well.

With enough time to rock around the Christmas tree and get a lovely treat from Eva we headed back to our meet up point.

Next week will be our last group run of 2022! So let’s make it a night to remember… wear your Santa hats and get ready to run 5km at Upton Court Park.

Having only done short distances for a while now, a few members asked if we could run a bit more! More running! Of course… da doo run run, da doo run run…

So tonight’s session was one of two halves. The first half was to knock out a 5km run (or 2km for those who preferred it) then onto a litter pick.

A firm favorite meet up point for a session like this has always been Upton Court Park.

Did you know?

Upton Court Park used to be farm land and was acquired by Slough Council in the 1930’s

Warming up ... sounds like a bit of a stretch to me

We started off with some running drills to warm everyone up then split into our two groups.

We sent the 5k team off first whilst the 2k’ers did some bench push ups. Once all run and dusted Gauri and Meera set off to catch up with Ninja Pam!

I managed to catch up with the 5k crew just as they turned at the Harvestor (I’m sure they went for a sneaky without me!).

Huge well done to the team for getting in more km than we usually do. Pam, Gauri and Meera did 3km, rest of team did 5km whilst Ricky went the extra mile and got 6km!

We then cracked on with a litter pick of the car park, managing a nice 5 bags of rubbish before heading off for the warmth of home!