Having discovered last week that we are far more skilled at chatting and eating cake than playing bowls, we stuck to safe territory as we gathered for our group run and chatted about food. Tracy and Kay had set our gastric juices flowing by talking about their pre-run bacon sandwiches, and it turned out that most of us are pretty partial to a bacon, or in the case of Emma the Trainer and Richard, facon sarnies.

With stomachs rumbling after all this food talk, we headed off towards Swindon’s Athletics Track, the home of Wheels for All. This was the location of our very first group run in August 2018. What a lot has changed since then – we’ve welcomed lots of new runners and walkers, supported our community with hundreds of good deeds at group runs, community missions, and with mission and coach runs, made lots of new friends, eaten lots of cake, drunk lots of coffee, and had a party or three. But, with a chill in the air, unlike that first run, there was no time to reminisce and the walking group headed off with the runners in hot pursuit.

By the time we arrived at the Athletics Track, the rain - or was it sleet? – had started but there was no escaping the outdoor painting task. Wheels for All is a national programme that embraces all children and adults with disabilities and differing needs, to engage in a quality cycling activity providing fun and stimulating cycling across the UK. Our task for the night was paint one of the cycle storage containers – and we’ll be back in January for part 2! Ben had everything set up for us ready to go – a huge vat of “weapons grade” green paint, and an array of brushes, rollers, and gloves. Sam was taking no chances and turned up with the GoodGym painting equivalent of full hazmat – a carefully prepared binbag clothing protector and some fetching pink rubber gloves (her aspiration for full length vet gloves not quite being met by the local supermarket). Once Gaby had fashioned a protective and stylish skirt from a bin bag, we grabbed our rollers and paintbrushes and got stuck in to the task.

This was quite some painting task – a huge container, very smelly and sticky paint, and the distraction of athletics training in the background. But undeterred, we set to work – with Mike putting his recent home decorating skills to good use. We powered through the task – in an attempt to keep warm – and soon we had turned the container from red to green. With our noses and fingers turning blue from the cold, it was time for photos before heading back to the Oasis and a warming cuppa and even more chat!

There’s a lot of GoodGym activity coming up in the next few weeks – here’s the run down:

If you haven’t got a place in the Swindon 10K on Sunday 17th November, why not join the GoodGym cheer squad? Let’s turn Swindon red again! Good luck to everyone taking part!

On Tuesday 19th November we are heading back to Toothill Farmhouse where there’s always a warm welcome and a cuppa and a biscuit too!

Our next Community Mission is on Thursday 21st November – we’ll be at Swindon Tesco Extra handing out FareShare 'shopping lists' with suggested donations. Customers can then buy items from this list to leave at the in-store food collection at the end of their shop. This food is taken to one of 21 FareShare Regional Centres where volunteers sort it to then redistribute it to 3500 charities across the country.

It’s nearly time for our “it’s not Christmas yet” Christmas party on Saturday 23rd November – an afternoon of delicious food and good company awaits! Sign up by Tuesday 19th November to confirm your place!

And looking ahead to December, we’ll be supporting Prospect Hospice with gift wrapping – sign up to get into the festive spirit with Jo and Tracey!

We like to celebrate in style in Swindon and there was much chatter and excitement amongst the 36 runners and walkers who gathered at the Oasis for our first birthday group run. It’s been a fantastic first year – 119 of us have run and walked 65 times to support community projects in Swindon, doing 901 good deeds, making 21 visits to older people and together we’ve covered 20285km, that’s more than half way round the world! And while there are a good number of data nerds in GoodGym Swindon, these figures only tell part of the story.

I think we’d all agree that the real success is the difference that GoodGym Swindon has made – to the community projects we have supported and to our own runners – and the new friendships that have been made while running, eating biscuits or over a well-earned cuppa.💓 It’s no wonder we were in party mood!

The chatting stopped momentarily as Emma the Trainer, put to use her famous Swindon parkrun Silence skills and gathered us together for the task briefing and getting to know you session. There were lots of new faces and some very familiar faces ones too. Welcome to Swindon first timers Addie, Ashleigh, Ciaran, Paul, Sharon – we hope you’ll join us again and become part of our GoodGym Family! We also welcomed Alexander Kenmure, who had spent the day with us talking all things GoodGym and piling on the pressure for this run report writer! Fingers crossed that this lives up to expectation!

We broke the ice with tales of memorable birthdays – many of which turned out not to have been remembered well at all, apart from Sharon’s, when aged 7 her new skateboard had an unfortunate encounter with a newly glazed door; not quite the smashing day she was hoping for! And then it was time to celebrate our achievements and soon the skies of Swindon were ringing with applause as we congratulated Stuart on becoming our first runner to complete 50 good deeds – we look forward to seeing the new black top soon!, thanked our Task Force for all that they do to support GoodGym by run and walk leading, back marking, organising community missions, taking photos and run report writing – here’s to you Andrew, Charles, Helen, Mike, Jo, Paul, Richard the Vicar, Sam, Simon, Simon and Tracey, and last but not least thanked the people who had got GoodGym Swindon up and running Emma the Trainer and Paul, and everyone who has run and walked with us over the last year!

And then we were off…our red tops snaking our way through the streets of Swindon, running, walking and of course chatting, on our way to the Haven Day Centre. The Haven offers food, support, mentoring, work experience, training and help into rehab for those who are homeless or vulnerable in Swindon. This was our largest ever group run but Carol at the Haven is always well prepared and quickly organised us into teams to power through the to do list.

Team Window Cleaning were soon polishing and shining away, making this task look pane-less. And You’ve Been (window) Framed was the photo theme for the night with many sill-y shots being taken! Meanwhile, Team Hedgerow got stuck in to cutting back brambles – a thorny problem but no match for us as we chopped and hacked our way through. And then there was the Demolition Gang, tasked with taking down a shed. This team showed no mercy and with under starters orders of “ready, sheddy, go” were roofless, quickly reducing the shed to just 4 walls and they soon disappeared too – before we knew it, the shed was demoliSHED!

With that, it was time to knock it on the shed and head back to the Oasis for birthday cake! Huge thanks to Stuart and Tracy who baked and decorated a cake that Mary Berry would be proud of!

What a fabulous way to end a fantastic GoodGym evening – so good that we almost got locked in to the Oasis! Time really does fly when you are having fun!

The fun will continue, come rain or shine, on Saturday when we are taking over Swindon parkrun. Don’t delay – sign up for this community mission HERE today! And then the celebrations continue with our GoodGym birthday party – we’d love to see you there!

Next week, we have a group run to Renew Swindon for a classic GoodGym Swindon hump and dump task – sign up here. We also have a community mission to We’re Open – now we’ve flexed our chatting, eating and drinking muscles with all these celebrations, it’s time to put them to good use supporting Sanctuary Seekers from across the world! We hope to see you soon!

This week we had a last minute cancellation at Heelis, National Trust… the gardener was ill! Fortunately, Emma the Trainer put in a few calls, and Becky at Swindon Night Shelter whipped the to-do list out for us. It must be Haven! We’ve helped out at the Night Shelter lots. We’ve sorted food, we’ve cleaned, and now we were doing one of our favourite tasks in the warmer months – gardening!

Fourteen of us gathered at the Oasis at the regular Tuesday time. Started by Emma the Trainer, the icebreaker was something extremely cathartic. What has really annoyed us recently? Lots of different things came up – navigating the bureaucracies of work, hospitals or horse purchases; oblivious tourists; questionable TV show endings; or the neighbourhood cat. But the worst? It’s real CARnation, many of us get really annoyed at cars. The top car annoyances are prangs and scratches; insurance idiocy; accidental reversings; slow car sales; and Stuart’s despised smart motorways! We giggled and grr-ed, and it was soon time to set off for the just over 4km run there and back to the Haven Day Centre.

This was one of our shorter runs and so we could hold a walking group too. Graham from the TaskForce, and Sharon set off walking first – great to see you Sharon, who’s halfway through injury rehab and is looking forward to joining us regularly again soon!

The rest of us ran (and never passed Sharon and Graham, how did that happen?!), and we were soon whizzing past the Magic Roundabout and arrived at the Haven.

What route did we take? The shear way to Haven!

We were met by Becky and Ben, the latter of whom had also brought along a handy lawn mower and strimmer. Becky briefed us – we had to weed, mow, strim, sweep, and shift a fence. We also had that gardening task we all face this time of year – getting the ping pong table out and giving it a test! As we worked, we also held out for a phone call any minute from Andrew’s wife, who’s ready to give birth any day now. As well as gardening, we also did a bit of food sorting and met up with our old friend Hetty the Hoover...

Charles does a great Freddie Mercury hoovering impression – it’s a kind of magic!

We soon had everywhere looking spic and span. We said our goodbyes to Ben, Becky, and Becky’s friends – who had joined us after we had held their dinner plans up. We offered to take them for a run next week as a way of apology, but I’m not sure they were convinced!

From here we split up - Kay and Tracy set off home, Graham and Sharon resumed walking, and the rest of us ran to the Oasis. On the way back, we stopped off for a quick photo by one of Swindon’s scariest sights – the road sign for the Magic Roundabout! We also re-hid a painted stone we found tucked away at the Haven. When back at the Oasis, Emma the Trainer led a stretch session, and we were all done for another week, apart from the all-important post-GoodGym coffees.

After more GoodGym greatness? Coming up we’ve got:

• A few of us are attending the Avebury Trust 10k on Sunday 26th May – more information here and via the WhatsApp group. On Sunday 23rd June we will then be going to North Somerset for another Trust 10K for a GG South-West Get Together. Check it out here!

• Tuesday 28th May, Paul’s piloting to Playstep’s Nursery to improve the condition of this popular childcare facility. Don't delay - book on today!

• We’ll soon be uploading our Group Runs and Community Missions right up until the end of July. Check them out here very soon!

• We’re also on the lookout for ways we could celebrate our 1 year anniversary in August. We’re already planning a parkrun takeover, a BBQ, and a special task, but how could we dress up to mark the occasion? Any ideas – stick them in the comments below!