Despite the grey skies and the thick mud underfoot, this week's Prospect Parkrun brought together a fantastic group of parkrunners, volunteers, and supporters. The course was certainly on the slippery side, but that didn’t deter us for our Reading GoodGym launch!

Thank you to Prospect Parkrun for giving us a special shout out at the start of the event, and to Oxford GoodGym for coming out in force with us in our red t-shirts!

Even the trail shoes weren't quite enough today, and it was an achievement to stay upright the whole way round! Our leaflet stack was significantly depleted with lots of people interested in finding out more about GoodGym.

A much needed team coffee at the park cafe was the perfect way to warm up and reflect on the morning for runners and marshals alike.

A big thank you to all the Parkrun volunteers as always for putting on a great event! And remember, if you're coming to Prospect Parkrun before the summer, don't wear white!

GoodGym Reading have now completed their first community mission 🥳

Five goodgymers met on a cold evening to do a litterpick around Reading town centre. Armed with bags and litter pickers kindly brought by Anwen, they set off to fill their bags. It wasn't long until Jacqui found our first pick of some cans lurking on the pavement!

With a wandering loop around the streets, we talked about what tasks we will be looking to do in future as we filled up the bags.

Sam and Sion joined us for the last leg after their run and helped us fill the bags!

With plenty of rubbish collected between us, (including several items of clothing?!) we tied up the bags and decided to warm up in Siren bar and continue our chat about what we'll do next!

You'll find us on 8th Feb at Prospect parkrun, sign up here! https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/prospect-parkrun-6bbe246e-46ff-4cf9-9632-437f0736ccb8

What an amazing turnout for this evening's session to help at Wessex Primary School, particularly considering we didn't meet in our usual start location. Just when I thought I knew how many we were, more would arrive! Maybe we could call ourselves the Countless of Wessex?

A very warm welcome to Helen, Rachel, Jennie and Alison, who joined us from the school community. It was also great to meet Sion and Sam, who Jenni invited from Reading to find out all about this weird and wonderful thing called GoodGym. We hope you can launch in your area soon - we'll definitely come and visit when you do!

A great big cheer for Taskforce member Louise, who organised our task for this evening and recruited many of our newbies from the school community. Top marks and a gold star for you!

Many thanks also to Mr Beaven and Mrs Pope, who welcomed us to the school, treated us to some jelly babies and stuck around until the end. We talked about a return visit later in the year to help with pond area...can't wait!

During the first part of the session lots of us went for a run or walk around Cox Green. The walkers did a scenic 2km (we passed not one but two Co-ops!) loop, and the lucky runners did similar but with a few extra back and forths to give the walkers time to catch up. This helped us to arrive at the task all warmed up and ready for action.

Lou did a great job of rapidly dishing out tasks to eager GoodGymers, and soon enough everyone was busy. Jennie, Alison, Georgeta, Rachel, Gillian and Helen bravely tackled brambles in a nature area, Adam, Clara, Jenni and Chris bravely tackled brambles next to a fence and Angela and Sara made speedy work of sawing down an overgrown shrub.

Everyone else focused on an area in the middle, where jobs included emptying a raised bed of plants (behaving like locusts), sanding a fence and bench, and painting the fence. An intriguing mix of small toys was also uncovered in the process.

Many hands made the to do list disappear fast. Lou has already received a big thank you from Mrs Corbett, who teaches in the area where we were working. She plans to take the children out first thing to admire our work.

So why the reference to smarty pants? Are we calling Lou a smarty pants because she organised such a bumper evening? Or is Jenni a smarty pants for bringing her Reading homies? Maybe we're all smarty pants for going back to school? Or should that be smarty 'paints' because of the awesome job the painters did blitzing the fence?

Well all of these would be excellent guesses, and quite true, but no. The title pun celebrates the GoodGymer who got paint on her trousers and didn't want to get it on the seats in my car, so had the bright idea to remove her trousers. I couldn't park right outside her house, so (looking quite a lot like an Olympic track star) she did a sprint finish down the road in her pants. What a memorable evening!