Happy bird-day to us! This week marks 4 years since we launched GoodGym in Windsor and Maidenhead and it was brilliant to see a record number of GoodGym chicks and chaps at our celebratory group run/party. This evening's brood included 25 of us, the biggest number since launch night back in 2020.

Our evening was a fun mix of team games and an eggcellent task: filling knitted chicks and bunnies with chocolate eggs for Alexander Devine Children's Hospice Services' Easter fundraising campaign. As one GoodGymer from team 'Diya's Darlings' put it, we helped with 'reverse births for our four birthdays'!

A warm welcome to Didem and Amy, who were joining us for the first time. I warned them at the start that this 'group run' might not be 100% representative of our typical Wednesday evening, but maybe it was the perfect introduction to the weird and wonderful stuff we get up to?

There was loads of laughter, silliness and cheering, we did some walking and running round the park, we used litter pickers and hoops, hi vis and gardening gloves (in our relay game) and there was a lot of chocolate (although this time we didn't eat it as was part of the task). With many hands we blitzed the task super quick and made a difference for a local charity. There was also quite a lot of fancy dress and a healthy dose of competitive spirit.

Just a 'normal' GoodGym session then!

Something we don't normally do at GoodGym is have epic games of GoodGym themed Pictionary or 'Guess the GoodGym beneficiary' quizzes, which we did enjoy last night. However these games gave us plenty of opportunity to share stories about what we've been doing for the last 4 years, so hopefully it was a nice overview for newcomers as well as an opportunity for everyone else to reminisce.

The chick stuffing task was a cracking task, partly thanks to task owner Yazmin being so organised and bringing everything to the community centre for us, and partly because the chicks and bunnies were SO CUTE! Huge kudos to the army of skilled crafters, including a team of GoodGymers, who made these little characters.

Now you shouldn't count your chickens, but we couldn't play 'guess the number of chicks' without a count, so Yazmin and I risked it. The grand total was 356, which is worth a fantastic £1068 to the charity.

At the end of the evening I tallied up all the points from the various games and the final scoreboard read:

2 Awesome for this 30 points (although I regret not awarding Jess points for her amazing Victorian child meets washer woman fancy dress, so maybe that number should have been higher)

The Mighty Ducks 40 points

Diya's Darlings 49 points

The Regal Bunnies 58 points and the win! This team really shone in the Pictionary and pun rounds.

Having said that, I really think everyone who came along this evening (and who has contributed to our last four years) is a winner. We've now helped over 90 charities and community groups, venues and projects in our local area. We've done 5,375 good deeds in our local area, including 625 visits to isolated older people.

Winner, winner, chicken winner!

20 goodgymers signed up for this session - the most we’ve had since the launch! We met at the community centre for a briefing about the task from Amy and an exchange of window puns (I’d steal them and pass them off as my own but I don’t want to make this too paneful) and then walked and ran the 2km to Braywick Health Nursery. The task owner Kit had a number of things that needed shifting so we were divided into two groups.

One group helped clear equipment from a very rickety shed (which, despite its intentions, did not fall down) and store everything away safely so the shed could be sent to ‘live on a farm’. As well as the expected shovels and rakes, we uncovered a huge connect four game (sadly only the frame so we couldn’t have a go), a couple of snails, and a lot of wooden Christmas trees, which are about as hard to store sensibly as you’d imagine. We finished that quickly but it wasn’t curtains just yet - we were set to window cleaning, which goodgym has helped with here many times before. We managed to make quite good progress, especially when wet cloths were replaced with Gillian wielding a hose!

The other group stayed inside in the light and helped move furniture, something goodgym started last time we visited, so the space can be used as a new staff area. This required the use of trolleys and a lot of strategic planning to make sure everyone left with the same number of toes. They also replaced some of the old ceiling tiles with new ones, so I think it’s fair to say that goodgym both literally and figuratively raised the roof.

After we’d completed the tasks and regrouped at the front of the nursery, we finished the night with a fitness session involving many creative variations of the Mexican wave. Then we set off home, amazed (and I do hope I’m not jinxing it for next week) that we hadn’t been rained on!

10 GoodGymers met at Homebase car park ready for their session helping Maidenhead Athletics Club (MAC) hop, skip and jump into the summer season by sprucing up their track.

We welcomed newcomer Alice for her first session and Amy 'long-jumped' straight in to brief the group on the evening's plan - a walk/run to the MAC track, a track session with Head Coach Leila (and taskowner) and then onto the planned tasks.

The group split with walkers Clara, Rachel, Kate, Jen and Jess heading straight off and runners Alice, Amy, Amy, Georgeta and Juli doing a dynamic stretching session before making their way to the track too.

Once at the track Leila set the team an interval training challenge consisting of alternating 'easy' and 'hard' sections with a handy air horn to keep everyone in check! 20 minutes and many laps of the track later the team had given it a great 'shot-put' and some 'sprint' finshes had even been on show!

The team were now ready to be 'javelined' into the list of jobs Leila had. This consisted of edging and sweeping along the long jump track, raking the erroneous grass left from the recent mowing session, and raking over the long jump sandpit. The list was no 'hurdle' for the team and the long jump area was looking spick and span in no time with lots of 'discus-ions' about athletics, running, the weather and grass houses!

Amy even had time to make a GoodGym grass motif out of the edging waste which of course we all had an obligatory photo round! Another photo oppotunity could not be missed on the walk home under a beautiful blossom tree!

Well done to everyone who helped out at the Maidenhead Easter Ten race. The sun shone, we welcomed GoodGym Portsmouth to Maidenhead, we had a great time helping out, and we had lots of positive comments and smiles from runners.

Sheila, Diya and Kanika joined me in cycling to the water station at mile 6. We did important jobs like decorating the hedge with bunting and making the GoodGym logo out of water cups, and even more important jobs like cheering on and hydrating lots of runners and picking up all the cups and other litter.

Mark was also on water duty, joining Maidenhead's Running Sisters (including our Gillian!) on their busy station, which supports runners at miles 1, 3 and 9. Welcome to Maidenhead Mark! We can't promise to send our MP to greet you every time but we might be able to conjure up Gillian again .

Kelley and Kate were on marshal duty. Kelley saved the day by heroically stepping into the lead marshal role at the last minute, and Kate did whatever her big sister Jen told her to do, since Jen (also a GoodGymer) was the Race Director.

Eggcellent work team!