Having proved our worth a few weeks ago as window cleaners, tonight we put our Mr Muscle to good use and headed out to St John’s Church in Haydon Wick for a spot of cleaning before joining the Slinn Allstars for Paul’s Run. This is an annual event in memory of Paul Gee from the Allstars that all local running groups are invited to for running, chatting and eating cake while raising money for the Prospect Hospice and Cancer Research UK. GoodGym Swindon has world glass chatting and cake eating skills, so it was a pleasure to put them to use for two good causes.

After having our photo taken with our fabulous new GoodGym Swindon banner, 13 runners set off from the Oasis, but not before revealing what exciting activities we’d got up to at the weekend. It’s hard to top Emma the Trainer’s root canal surgery, but tales of Tracey’s longest ever run (maybe that explains all the yawning?), Andrew and his twin Tim running exactly the same time at different parkruns (spooky) and Jason’s birthday were not bad runners up.

After our usual chatty run, joined by Simon from the Allstars, through parts of Swindon most of us had never seen before, we met more keen and eager members of the GoodGym family at St John’s Church, including Teresa, Ashleigh, Alethia and Kay, who were all ready to spring (clean) into action. Grabbing our cleaning materials we set to work cleaning windows and the kitchen and soon the place was sparkling – good company and chatter making the task paneless as always. Making time to talk and being there to support members of our GoodGym family through good and bad times is an important part of GoodGym for us. GoodGym is not only about doing good and getting physically fitter, but supporting mental well-being too – each week at GoodGym and also by runners like Kirsty and Jo raising awareness about mental health by running Miles for Mind too.

After the group photo – with no acts of sabotage this week – in an attempt to confuse the report writer we headed off in three groups. The going straight home gang, which included Sam who ran her first marathon this weekend – congratulations!, Sam who needed to catch a bus, and Mike who had to cycle home, said their goodbyes. The straight back to base gang, including Stuart, Tracy, Lily and Carly who had all been busy walking and climbing at the weekend, ventured off to the Oasis with Google maps close at hand. And then the no pane, no gain gang including Charles and Graham who joined Paul’s Run before running back to the Oasis. But due to Strava and watch failures, there is no evidence that this extra run really happened...

As we all know if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happenl

And all too quickly, that was GoodGym over for another week. Next week we are running to Penhill Haven to fix playground equipment and use our gardening skills. Weed love to see you there – sign up here