Following the immense heat of last week, Brighton Goodgym meet on a much milder evening that even looked to threaten rain... Luckily we were spared any real down pours AND we welcomed new Brightonian Hannah! Hannah is no stranger to Goodgym having run with Slough before moving to the south coast; welcome to Brighton!

This week we were artfully covering graffiti tags that plague the Hannover part of Brighton. Cllr David had us all organised as ever, with the strategy of divide and conquer!

Enroute to the Percy Wagner buildings we dropped off Juliet and Philippa at the Phoenix Gallery to meet Simon to cover some tags behind the Pheonix Community Center.

Rosemary and Diego, not wanting to get covered in paint (wise choice, I'll be brushing it out of my hair for days!) accompanied Cllr Steph to the top of Elm Grove to help with some weeding that the council hadn't managed to get to. Bonus kudos for the both of you for the extra mileage AND hill running!

Those of us that were left roamed in 2s and 3s in the local residential streets to erase the tags we saw. Some of us were approached by local residents who cracked jokes and thanked us for our efforts.

Once we had all gathered back on The Level it was time for some dynamic stretching to help with our mobility. If anyone would like a professional description and explanation, please out this video. Its a great way to start a run and get the most out of it!

Another happy Monday with an army of Goodgymer’s ready to run and walk to do a good deed. As we had a short distance today, we had the option of walking, running or ‘jeffing’ the short 1km to the task location.

Great to have Mabu and Sarah come back for a second visit! And to have Sharara join us on her first Group Run with us.

The briefing done, Run Leader Darren led the warm up and then we headed out. Thank you to Jenni and Ricky for being our walk leaders today and Sara and Pam for leading the jeffing Jeffers (our walk/run option).

A blazer of Glory

This was our first task with Uniform Express. As a parent I love this concept of recycling unwanted clothes and task owner Shannel is doing a great job of helping parents to spend less by offering good quality unwanted uniforms.

Every Tuesday afternoon, she provides local parents with an opportunity to buy grown out off, good quality Slough School uniforms for both Primary and Secondary school children. Just pop along to the Home Slough unit (ex Top Shop) in the Observatory Shopping Centre from 1pm till 4pm.

So for any parent/career out there with attire to retire, a guise to disguise or slacks to axe…then follow suit of others and recycle them with Uniform Express!

Off the rails

So on arrival to the Home Shop, I had the task of opening up the store! Not being the best with a set of keys (as in I loose mine all the time!)…I made sure I knew exactly which pocket these were in and which key opened which lock…though a bit of trial and error was used as I can be keyless sometimes!

Once we were in, we had the whole shop to ourselves. Our task was to collect the items from the store room above the shop unit and bring them down, rail them up ready for tomorrow.

Seen as we all came to improve our fitness, we had one rule and one rule only – DO NOT USE THE LIFT

Leg work was the order of the day….think the team were stumped to hear this, but these guys are all footloose and were hip hip hooraying….until they saw how many stairs were involved!

Step by step we bought down all the clothes and very fashionably displayed them on the rails.

Darren in true Darren style…found the mannequin and made friends with her. A lasting friendship? Probably...

Mabu was on a mission to bring down everything from the store!

Meera, Sara and Nisha got their steps in for sure today. But you know you should never trust stairs...they are always up to something!

Downstairs…we had a couple on the sofa, whilst others busily helped put the rails together and get the uniforms out.

There was some order to the chaos…though don’t ask me what it was as I’m still trying to work out my left leg from my right leg!

Put your left leg in your left leg out…do the hokey pokey and burn it out!

As we finished the task in good time and had the use of a nice warm indoor space, we thought we would do a nice leggy workout. So 1 set on each leg of 8 exercises focusing on the glutes and hip stability with balance thrown in for good measure….the team were well and truly legless!

Task complete we started to head bask to base.

First to leave were the walkers

Followed by the jeffers

Next in line were the runners

And last but not least... Meera and I who had extra responsibility of locking up and safely returning the keys to Slough CVS offices...

En route back from our detour we found the walkers munching on a McDonalds! Meera and I couldnt face the shame of it so we legged it back to base for the (surprise) cakes...

Fresh off the shop floor news this week

Super Smiley Harsha Smashes her Spartan Ultra!

She’s our very own Goodgym Goddess. I’ve known Harsha was a few years now (5 to be precise) and one thing that depicts her is her smile…she actually never stops smiling. Such a happy person all the time and always doing something for the greater good. This weekend gone, Harsha undertook a 30 mile Ultra Spartan Race. Those of you who know about Spartan will know that 30 miles alone will be a piece of cake for Spartans…so they add in extra challenges…like 80 obstacles, mud and water pits just to make sure you have an extra fun race!

Oh and I forget to mention that this race was not in the UK…Harsha flew all the way to Malaysia to undertake this challenge…Well done SuperGirl. Can’t wait to hear all about it.

GG Golden Girl

I can’t compete with running 30 miles or doing 80 obstacles last week, but I did reach my 100 Good Deeds milestone on Wednesday.

So as much as I was going to let this milestone go by relatively unnoticed, Sut and Nisha had other plans. Check out the photos for the special surprise they had planned! Thank you so much #teamGGSlough

Next week we will be visiting another first time task owner at St Anthony’s Church…come and join us?

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/weeding-the-church-gardens