Woking Junior Park Run

This morning Wayne, Kirsty, James, & Melanie met at Woking Park to carry out various volunteering roles at the junior park run 🏃‍♀️.

The sun was out ☀️ and so were 103 young runners who tackled the 2k course.In total there were 23 PB's with the fastest time being a fantastic 07:32.

Great running by everyone 😄

On a lovely sunny Wednesday evening, Anne was already waiting outside the sports centre as Adam arrived with a coffee to sharpen his energy levels.

While waiting for the other runners, Anne was talking Adam through the route she was thinking of as she had passed plenty of litter.

It wasn't long before Julie arrived and we had a quick catch up as Kirsty arrived. We decided that we will start with the run and plogging as we can keep Melanie updated with our location as we move along. So from the leisure centre we headed towards Woking park along the stream. Onces we got to the bridge we quickly crossed it only seeing very little litter to pick up. We quickly made it down the path to Elbridge Lane. There were lots of plastic bottles which were thrown over the wired fence making it tricky to get hold of but the GoodGyming persistence paid off and we manned to get most of it.

We then turn to go back into Woking park as we recalled the route being messy in places around the parkrun route. Once in to wooded area there were pieces of litter in little spots to the left and right as we made our way through the wooded area, as the litter became less and less which was a great thing to see something else took our notice!

As we followed the path around to join the stream we quickly noticed some Himalayan balsam along the stream. The first batch we saw was too close to the steam bank to try and tackle and remove it but we quickly came across some more further down. Before a word was said we all dived in and started removing them, and quick stamping then down. It was at this point Melanie joined us feeling a little irritated being late from work. She was very ready to get involved and stomp down on some Himalayan balsam and found hearing the crinkling sounds of crashing the Himalayan balsam rather therapeutic.

Once we noticed we had been crushing the Himalayan balsam for a long time! We decided to get back to plogging on our way back to the lake centre with the two full bags of litter we collected.

Awesome work from Woking GoodGymers 😁

What a fantastic turn out for the mission at Woking Foodbank as 13 GoodGymers turned up to do a deep clean. The Foodbank is one of our regular and most popular missions where we usually clean the floors and wipe the surfaces. But Kirsty had the great idea to do a deep clean of all the shelves and fridge etc. Because there were so many of us it didn't take too long and we ended the evening with the traditional photo on the staircase. A massive cheer to Rob and Stephanie for their second mission with Woking GoodGym and to Julie for reaching 50 good deeds. We can't wait to see you in the black t-shirt Julie. Also a massive well done to Luan who ran non-stop from the Foodbank back to the meeting point at the leisure centre after a break in running. You are officially a runner now Luan.

Woking junior parkrun #315 – Sunday 3rd August 2025

What a glorious morning it was for Woking junior parkrun this Sunday! The sun was shining, the skies were clear, and the park was buzzing with energy and excitement as our young runners gathered for event number 315.

We had some fantastic performances on the course this week. Huge congratulations to Marilyn, our first female finisher, who crossed the line in an impressive 7:26, and to Oliver, the first male finisher, coming in close behind at 7:48. Brilliant running from both!

Of course, none of this would be possible without our amazing volunteers – all 33 of them this week! A special shout-out goes to the fantastic team from GoodGym, who came out in force to support the event.

James and Melanie kept spirits high on the course as marshals

Adam was on barcode scanning duties with a smile

Katie and Phil took charge of timekeeping, making sure every finish time was recorded perfectly

A big thank you to all our volunteers – whether you're clapping, cheering, timing, scanning or tail walking, you make this event the highlight of the week for so many young runners.

See you next Sunday for more fun, fitness and community

*Alpine Loop Hill Training 🏃‍♀️ *

Big welcome to Robert who attended his first GG session, and what a session to attend 🤣

A superb turn out from Woking GoodGym for a hill training session. I'm sure we would have changed our minds if we knew what we had in store. Wayne told us there were only a few hills but I counted at least 27. Up was hard going in the warm evening and on the gravel but going down was even worse😩 . There was a lot more walking than running, at least from me, but I think we were all glad to take a break to avoid the army trucks doing their driving training 🚚. We happily welcomed Robert to his first session with us and what a one to pick! Thank you to Anne for caring for everyone on the downhill 🗻sections and go Wayne for not getting us lost. Nadia did a great job with the warm up, safety briefing and keeping everyone together. 🪾 Well done to Katie, Alys, Melanie, Julie and Andy too for conquering the hills in good spirits. 🌳The company certainly made the hills more bearable. Lastly, a thank you to Julie for the puns in the report title.