On a glorious Friday morning 9 GG'er got their sticks, their gloves and nose pegs on and headed out to the beautiful Jubilee River.

The vast majority of the River is stunningly beautiful and clean, however there are a few stretches that are just littered with beer cans, food wrappings and plastic bags!

We spent around 45 minutes tidying this area up and filled 12 bin bags full of rubbish.

A clean state for the start of the year - lets hope it litteralley continues for the rest of the year

This evening it was our 1st year anniversary group run and task. And who better to work with tonight other than our very first task owner Claire from the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust.

It's amazing to think that one year ago we launched with 29 new people joining us on our first ever task. Some of these guys are still with us today. But today we had a massive 30 runners turn up! Great to have Liv, our GG trainer from Ealing join us tonight – thank you for coming. And a very warm welcome to Jill on her first session with us.

All I can really say about the past year is that I have LOVED every Monday evening. Spending it with what truly are some of the nicest, funniest, good-hearted people you will ever meet.

‘Alone, we can do so little, together, we can do so much’

I love the diversity of runners that we have in Slough. Our team consists of new graduates; experienced runners to some who have hardly run at all; runners in their 20;s, 30;s, 40’s; 50’s, 60’s and even one runner in her 80’s; we have runners with young families to runners with older children and 3 Goodgym babies will be born this year too! Whatever their reason to run and do good is, all I can say that I am truly grateful for their ongoing commitment and support to Goodgym Slough.

So in our 1st year of running and doing good we have completed 819 good deeds (around 350 hours of voluntary work) and helped 22 different community groups in Slough. We’ve trained 3 runners to become Run Leaders and 6 as Task Force team members and slowly but surely we are making progress with coach runs and missions. Can’t wait to see what our second year holds for us.

Toad-ally awesome birthday task

An environmental clean-up of a stream to give the wildlife a chance to thrive, building an insect home, log clearance and a litter pick were the tasks of the day.

And really only task owner Claire could be so accommodating of such a big group tonight – Thank you Claire!

So after the usual welcome brief, we headed outside so Run Leader Sut Yee could do a warm up with the team.

Run Leaders Darren and Ricky then took the team out for a little run around the park whilst Claire, Sut, Denise, Louisa and I got the tools ready for the task. We then divided into four teams:

• The waders
• The diggers
• The loggers
• The pickers

Ace of wades

The waders are always a hit…wearing oversized onesies is quite fashionable in Slough so Sandy, Emily, Antonio, Sara, Harsha, Liv, Jenni and Lucy litter-alley could not wait to don their waders, collect their pickers and started to clear the Salt Hill stream of litter. And what a task they had!

Can you dig it…yes you can

The diggers who were bugging us the most, were sent off on a hive of activity to dig the insect homes. Mo (who actually hates digging) was on digging duty alongside Gauri, Jean and Kam. The aim of the holes were to fit the bigger logs to create a tree like climbing area for insects to thrive in. It was ground breaking stuff.

Log In Log Out

And the loggers worked out a log-ical method of collecting the logs.

Judging by the state of Harry’s t-shirt, this was no mean task. It required skill and co-ordination. Pam and Jas had a great technique going. They used a log in, log out method to prevent bumping into each other….And the team were tree-umphant in completing their task. Harry, used a cave man style, whilst Emma used her rugby skills and scrummed them into position.

Litter bugs me

The pickers were on a mission to clear as much rubbish as they could and they actually did go down that alley way – litter-alley! Tim, Meera and Nisha tackled that alley way, whilst Jen, Ruth, Jill, Denise and Louisa refused to give up and picked up every litter bit of trash they could find.

As luck would hive it, with so many of us tonight, the tasks were done in no time. Just check out the photo of the amount of rubbish we collected! Over 15 bag fulls!

It’s a bit swarm

As it was such a lovely swarm evening, we thought a nice quiz on all that knowledge we had on Goodgym was in order.

Quiz Master Manjit divided the groups into 2 teams with Run Leaders Ricky and Darren heading them up.

There was an ulterior motive for playing this game – remember last week when Sut Yee was soaked by Darren and Ricky? Well, today was pay-back time.

The losing team leader – in this case, both the Run Leaders! were soaked to the bone in a very fair and orderly water gun flight.

Life is what you bake it

To finish off the evening we had to have cake! I did offer to bake a cake, but for some reason Darren said no and Meera and Sandy insisted it must be a cake box cake!

So we headed into the centre for cake, pakoras and samosas! Thank you Lucy for baking the homemade blueberry muffins and Sut Yee’s aunty for the banana cakes.

I was so touched (the tears showed that!) by the video clip footage of everyones well wishes. Honestly, I cannot tell you what those messages mean to me. I do what I do because I love helping others and to know that this has somehow positively impacted so many of you means so much.

Have a fantastic week and see you at next week’s task.

On a glorious Easter Bank Holiday Monday it was great to have 8 people join us on tonight’s task. The task was a return visit to The Royal British Legion in Cippenham to finish off painting the fence panels from last week

Egg-ercising

After our welcome brief we headed outside to do our warm up.

Lets be honest, we’ve probably all had a little too much of something this weekend. So for our warm up we focused on egg-plosive movements to get that heart rate hopping. Its all bun and games with Goodgym Slough. A jumping competition with the lure of an egg at the end. The teams were a bit competitive to say the least! Well done to the winning duo Ricky and Darren

We didn’t want to be chocoLATE to the task so we got going on our 2.5km run to Cippenham with Mo back marking

Lean on me

On arrival we were met by Tracy, Bridgit and Rob from The Royal British Legion and they gave us the tools to finish off the fence.

It was also great to have Jen, Mo and Khalida join us today. Not regular Monday runners but nonetheless always come down when they can to lend a helping hand.

And a huge well done to Sara, Sut and Ruth who had just completed races this weekend. I think an extra mention needs to be made to Sara. In today’s race she came across a fellow runner who was really struggling from the start. Sara noticed this lady and ran the whole race by her side making sure she was ok….the true spirit of Goodgym’er. Well done Sara

Stroke of genius

As per last Monday, the team really did take on the fence painting challenge. Ricky went straight over to the fence panel he started last week.

Mo, closely supervised by Khalida got stuck right in. Darren took the biggest brush he could find and the fence panel furthest away (which meant we all needed to meet him in the middle in order to get the job finished). Clever thinking Darren

Jen, Sara and Ruth could see the finish line in sight and just ignored me several times when I gave the 5 minutes left announcement.

True dedication! or they just didn’t want to have time to do my egg and spoon race?

All in all they did a cracking job! Another great task completed for free by a team of runner volunteers!

Let’s hope the good weather continues now as we have a riverside based task next week, which will have a ‘walk leader’ for those who want to try Goodgym but prefer not to run. The task is a 2km walk/run from our base location in Salt Hill park. Our task will be to help tidy up the boat yard area. So please do come along and join us

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/jubilee-river-spruce-up

That’s all yolks Have an egg-stremly good week

A launch with a bang....29 runners smashed it tonight on the first ever GoodGym Group Run in Slough Town

After the welcome speeches and cheers (thank you Councillor Pantelic for opening our 1st Group Run), we headed out of our base location to do a warm up and ice breaker...28 people had to get to 'knowing me knowing you ahah'

I know you

After a warm up game of getting to know you (we exchanged names and our favourite places to go on holiday)...we headed out on a steady 2km run to the stream at Templewood to give this little hidden gem a strim, trim, pick and prune to allow the vegetation to flourish again. We were met by our first task owner Claire from www.wwt.org.uk (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust), who are doing an amazing job in transforming the Salt Hill Stream and surrounding areas. She gave us a brief on what we could do to help this community area and divided us into 3 teams:

• The Waders
• The Pickers
• The Wheelbarrowers

Each team were tasked to complete their given duties within a challenging 30 minutes. Special shout out to Ricky and his wheelbarrowing buddies for showing true grit and determination of the Slough citizens by wanting to finish laying the wood chips along the path (even when everyone else was lining up for the group photo)

Freedom

We bashed those brambles (Sut Yee in particular looked very fetching in her waders), freed the vegetation, cleared the site of 10 bags of rubbish/debris (and a loo seat!) and covered the path with wood chips...phew! A lot was achieved tonight.

We faired Claire a cheerio and see you later and headed back to base in two groups

Steady vs Speedy

Our return run was a battle of speeds.. we divided into 2 groups...Mo's Speedies and Manjit's Steadies..Just for being speedy, Mo's team had a 2 minute penalty wait as Manjit's steadies headed back to base... suffice to say its steady all the way in Slough.. Great effort by everyone!

Great to see so many people join us this evening.... some of us were established runners, others were first timers...whatever your reason to run, it was fab having you there tonight on our launch event...you all ROCK!

Keep in touch?

We have many means of keeping in touch, so please take a look and join in on our journey to help the communities of Slough

• GoodGym Slough website
• Goodgym Slough Instagram
• Goodgym Slough facebook
• Goodgym Slough twitter

We will be running and doing good every Monday from now on, so please come back and spread the word...together we can achieve so much...Next week we are running a 2km route (one way) to help The Parvaaz Project on Northampton Avenue to have a garden make over