Seas the day…Summer is one in a melon

One by one we are all returning from our summer break with skin like beaches and cream and enough Vitamin C to last us till winter. Good to have a big team of runners tonight with Richa joining us for the first time and Chi visiting us from Haringey for a bit of GG tourism.

With this being a big birthday month for Goodgym we have a few things coming up that you might wish to get involved in:

• So let’s Be Gin with a party! On Saturday 7th September we will be having a little triple at The Henry in Eton High St from 7.30pm…so come and join us and remember…friends don’t let friends get thirsty!

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/happy-10th-birthday

• Then on Saturday 21st September it is our mega Goodgym day of good deeds. A day when all areas are hopefully going to be able to make this Saturday a Super Saturday of helping the local communities. We, at Slough will be doing our bit. Here is the link to our community mission…but fear not! I will put some detail into this soon once we have worked out who we will be helping.

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/improving-something-somewhere-in-slough

Knock, Knock…who’s there?...Eyesore…Eyesore who?...Eyesore from my run

Well, maybe not too sore as we had a lovely short run to the task today. It was 1.5km from base and after our welcome brief and warm up, we set off through the parks of Slough with Ruth back marking for us.

On arrival, Super Sut met us with the equipment we needed to do the garden tidy up for our first ever visit to Crosby House Surgery. We were there on the Doctor’s orders to help them tidy up the front garden space as the weeds were starting to having a pulse of their own.

Weed better get a move on

With plenty of help tonight we got started and knowing that gardening helps to develop our muscle sprouts we put in the extra effort and dug deep and found the energy to clear the site.

One thing I have observed about two of our regular runners Jen and Pam is that they find an area of their own and will not stop until they have cleared the whole area. These two superstars literally scraped out every little weed along the front of the GP’s surgery….Even when we were nearing the end of our time there, they didn’t want to throw in the t-r-owel just yet!

You need a lot of patients to get through a task like tonight’s. These weeds had a life line of their own and cutting the blood supply wasn’t going to stop their nervous system from carrying on!

Within 45 minutes we really had made a massive impact at the surgery. The front area now looked amazing.

Job done, we set back off to base…but there was a surprise

Core you’re fit

Jenni let me into a little secret. Apparently Chi has a reputation! Upon meeting him, you would never guess, but underneath the charming exterior was a man…a man on a mission… a mission to inflict pain….pain in the core (I had a really nice glutes fitness session planned however, Chi insisted that my pain in the butt could be saved for next week).

So we headed into Baylis Park for the fitness session that Chi was going to inflict or undertake I should say. We had mountain climbers, planks, leg cross overs, knee tucks…you name it..he did it…he was kind enough to give us 7 seconds of rest…a whole 7 seconds (so much can be achieved in 7 seconds!).

Thank you Chi… we abs-olutely loved it!

Next week we have another nice local run and leaflet drop task. For those of you coming, please bring a lightweight set of dumb bells or water bottles for our resistance based fitness session.

PS - Thank you Jen for all the great puns tonight!

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 is the task we have all been waiting for! When we first visited Jamie at the Jubilee River Riverside Centre, he dangled a carrot in front of us and said that on one of our future visits we could do a river tidy up by getting into the kayak’s!

Jamie has been amazing and always so accommodating that we always have a good turnout to his tasks…but today was a real corker…we had 25 runners tonight! Canoe believe it! And Jamie had a lovely surprise for us

Lets go oar we’ll be late

Needing more time to do a river over our normal 45 minutes, Jamie asked if we could get to the centre a bit earlier. So I anchoraged the runners to meet at base location at 18:00 or meet our two wonderful Run Leaders Darren and Sut Yee at the Riverside Centre in case they were going to be tide up at work (but fear knot… Run Leader Darren still had a run planned for anyone going directly).

With lots to hear about Shindig (thank you Emily and Sandy for attending that)…we did our safety brief and headed out for a quick warm up.

Thank you Chrissy and Gail for being our walk leaders today and our back markers Ruth, Emily, Antonio and Keira.

Meera and her double G

On arrival we met the rest of the team and task owner Jamie. Jamie gave the team the water safety brief, he gave each runner going into the water a life jacket..which Meera was really happy about as it gave her the double G look she had always wanted.

Jamie also did a quick rendition on how to use the oars – all I heard was ..left, right and lots of swinging but Im sure there was more technique involved. So as we eagerly listened to Jamie’s safety brief we were all waiting for the punch line – the actual task information.

Well, there was the surprise. Jamie had ever so kindly decided that as we’ve helped him on so many occasions, that tonight, we would just have fun! Oh Bouy! What an oar-some guy he is…

Whatever floats your boat

So the kayak team (way too many to name however special shout outs to Alex K our Business Development Manager who was visiting us today, Sandip who came back after nearly a year and Chris, who was missing football training for us tonight)….well, they all by hook or crook got themselves into the kayaks and safely shuffled their boats into the River…some went in with grace, others were a bit close boat no cigar type of entrances.

Suffice to say, they all went riverside safely…phew! Best not to make waves…and just hope for the best.

So off they went…whilst Jean, Chrissy, Denise, Gail, Ruth and I stayed back to actually do a plogging task (someone had to do something tonight!)

Wreckon we had more fun anyway!

We collected 7 buckets full of rubbish in the time it took the Kayak team to play games on the River…yes you read that correctly…they played games of sharks and fishes; tag; catching the ball; swapping canoes and even had some races! I did hear that Ricky and Darren are in the bad books! Not that I’m trying to rock the boat but we had a very wet Sut Yee and Sara at the end of the session. I think a revenge attack may need to take place one day…hmmm, next week’s task involves water too – just saying!

Hook, line and sinker

The ploggers were all done in around 40 minutes and with a Mccy D just round the corner that meant only one thing!

Wife Denise (as only wife’s can)…took Husband Darren’s car keys, his wallet and a list of ice cream options!

So when the boat-iful boaters returned all tired and with soggy bums, we greeted them with a McFlurry of cheers…

Fish we had more time tonight as we had a whale of a time (Think I may have gone overboard on the puns today so i'll just stop now).

Next week is our one year anniversary of Goodgym Slough and to celebrate we have two things planned:

1. Drinks at The Henry on Friday 26th July from 19:30 onwards (please note change of date from Saturday to Friday) - please come and join us

2. Our one year task on Monday is back with our inaugural task owner Claire from the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust. Would love to see as many of you as possible on this task https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/one-year-birthday-waders-n-wellies

Enjoy the wonderful sun this week everyone