The runners of GoodGym Slough became guinea pigs this evening, as they welcomed new run trainer Amy from Windsor and Maidenhead and allowed her to practice her run leading skills on them. Amy briefly introduced the evening's activities and then handed over to Slough Run Trainer Manjit, who's local knowledge and super-organised annotated maps were essential for the leaflet dropping task ahead in support of Slough libraries.

Manjit also encouraged the group to reflect on how we can spread kindness in our community, inviting us each to pledge to perform a random act of kindness, which we wrote on recycled greetings cards.What would you pledge?

Guinea pigs clearly like group hugs

During the warm up the group made Amy feel really at home and were very game when she got them running around and started shouting numbers at them. Valentine's Day has been and gone, but Slough clearly still had lots of love to give, as Amy's instruction to get into groups was quickly interpreted as give massive group hugs!

Hopefully this made new member Mekaya feel very welcome too. Today was Mekaya's first group run, but she looked very at home in her red t-shirt and wasted no time getting stuck in.

We couldn't be-leaflet how cold it was

Tonight run out was a relatively short one to the Baylis area of Slough, where we then ran a bit more, distributing leaflets telling residents about the fab Spring Programme of events and exhibitions coming up at the Slough Libraries.

Did you know that Slough offers so many cultural and arts events at its local libraries, ranging from family events to events for young people to comedy nights for the grown-ups. As well as just going to the libraries to take out a book – the old fashioned way! Take a look at their latest online brochure here: https://www.slough.gov.uk/downloads/LIB-6380_Jan-Apr%202020.pdf

Jen and Ihfaz librarly broke a sweat as they lead the pack towards the 'drop zone', where we hoped to target schools' catchments.

On arrival, we split into twos and threes and headed off with stacks of leaflets to drop through letter boxes. Empty-handed runners returned to our meeting point in good time and Amy introduced the group to some unusual balances and a monkey swing Mexican wave to keep us from freezing. We also compared notes on our experience of the task, Roisin and Amy concluding that they would make poor burglars after a failed attempt at spotting Manjit's mum's house.

We then hot-footed it (or at least slightly-warmer-footed-it) back to base for our fitness session. The session was an interactive one with runners setting each other exercises to complete. Emily set the bar with high knees to start, we had squats in every direction, we enjoyed a lovely side stretch half way round to give our legs a break, and then just when we thought it was time to go home and curl up a good book, Amy surprised us with a plank. We then had a stretch (thanks Kam for keeping us balanced!) and a natter and headed home.

Coming up....a pancake sandwich?

Next Monday we work up an appetite for pancake day as we return to Sewak Housing to brush up on our painting skills. Sign up here

On Tuesday you can eat lots of pancakes at home... Then on Wednesday 26th lots of us will be getting a bonus group run fix at the launch of neighbouring GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead. Sign up here to help at the Maidenhead Community Allotment and to welcome lots of new runners to the fold!

More community love

We have a few more community missions on the system, so please do check them out. They are on Friday’s, Saturday’s and Sunday’s. https://www.goodgym.org/areas/slough/happenings/community-missions

Well done Amy on a great session and brilliant report! I think Windsor and Maidenhead are ready to rumble! Have a great week everyone... See you same time, same place next week... Manjit

Our task tonight was to deliver leaflets for the Cultures and Libraries department at Slough Borough Council. Last week they held their libraries week and were celebrating libraries in a digital world. Libraries these days offer so much more than just books! With performances, half term activities, Christmas pantos now on the index…you really should check out what they have on offer…to find out more…renew your knowledge by clicking on https://www.slough.gov.uk/libraries

Set fly-er to the rain

I now can’t remember a Monday Group Run where we haven’t been rained on, lucky for us though, the predicted torrential downpour due to happen at 7pm, actually didn't come until 8.13pm (to be precise).

But 13 hardy soles were ready to run and deliver those flyers regardless. They had the running lights at the ready and looked booky-licious in them!

Great to have new runners join us at this time of year….so a warm welcome to Ruth , Patricia and Amy. And even better to have a returning running Naomi come back to her second session with us.

So after our welcome brief, safety notes, warm up and general chit chat, we headed out in a group towards Shaggy Calf Lane where there are 3 schools nearby so an ideal location to distribute the leaflets.

Thank you to Sara, Pam, Emily and Sandy for back marking.

Jeffing Jammers

In fact our back marking team were testing a walk/run approach tonight. Technically it’s called Jeffing after Coach Jeff Galloway, but we had our own spin on it - The Jeffing Jammers.

So, whilst we waited for The Jammers to meet us at the cross junction, we tasked Antonio (our solo male) tonight to do a quick fitness session.

The squats were fine and dandy, the wall push ups were easy peasy but we draw a line at the nose to floor push ups! You were on your own on that one Antonio.

Tickle my spine

So on arrival to the task area, we sub divided into smaller groups so we could cover a greater area – what a novel idea!

With 200 leaflets to distribute we had our hands full and it always tickles my spine how competitive the teams get in their race to distribute and return to the start point – guess they don’t want to be fined for being overdue?

The teams were divided into Team Jen and Team Kam. Each team had their own street to cover as quickly as they could and run back to the start point on Shaggy Calf Lane.

Team Jen fly-ered their way back first. Team Kam were just too busy chatting and taking photos….

Next week we are back our fly-ering, but this time in the Langley area and for the recently opened Thames Hospice Charity Shop at Harrow Market. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/helping-thames-hospice-find-volunteers

And also on Friday we have a community mission to help the Thames Hospice shop with a clothes sort out. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/clothes-sorting-a4d97c49-40f1-4755-9a61-ecd2946e58fb

Please do come and join us for either session if you can

This evening we were back out delivering leaflets for Slough Libraries and Cultures department at Slough Borough Council. With our welcome brief and warm up complete (thanks Sut for leading the warm up), we decided to take a different route into Langley today – a novel idea as running up past Tesco and Sainsbury’s only makes us hungry for (lie)-brie…

Plus we wanted more locals to see us run through town looking all fine in our red t-shirts (we actually do get approached to ask who we are and what we are doing)…and its always a great turn up for the books when a member of the public then googles us and registers for a group run.

Thank you Ruth, Sandy, Ricky and Sut Yee for back marking duties today. And Chrissy for walk leading part of the task tonight.

A library is an early version of the World Wide Web!

Isn’t it just! No need to be hush hush anymore in a library…they’ve moved with the times – it was bound to happen.

We are very lucky in Slough to have an amazing new library, The Curve. There is a wide array of activities and performances that take place here and at the some of the other libraries. The one in Britwell is also really impressive. Definetly book mark these for trips with the kids during the summer holidays.

Lets make shhh happen

So we arrived at Upton Court Park to meet Nisha who had kindly agreed to bring the box of leaflets to us (I like my spine so didn’t wish to break it with the heavy load) so an alternative delivery method was needed.

Our areas of focus was around Ditton Academy in Upton, so with 18 of us running today, we split up into smaller teams and headed out to the local streets to deliver the leaflets.

The team tonight used every trick in the book to take on the shorter distance…Team Nisha won the toss and covered Quaves Road whilst Team Darren took on the estate near Ditton Academy.

The task itself didn’t take us too long today…with 18 eager beavers on board tonight.

We did however get to do our own rendition of Abbey Rd cover shot, took on the #loveparks of Slough, covering Salt Hill, Upton Court Park and Lascelles Park…as well as our own photo shoot against the formidable graffiti near The Curve Library undertaken by Aik Saath…Amazing talents in Slough

Girls just wanna hang fun

As part of our fitness session today we decided to see if we could beat our dead hang times from the last time we did the same leaflet drop task – what a coincidence hey!

Well done to Lucy for hanging for the longest time…and to everyone else for giving the exercise a go…

Upcoming runs:

Next weeks task is a corker! We will be getting into kayak’s on the Jubilee River to clear the river bed of litter. I have had to cap this run so please book it soon if you want to come along. I may need to make the meet up time at 18:00, however will confirm during the week to those registered for the run. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/fancy-a-trip-along-the-river

And don’t forget to come along to our 1st year anniversary task https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/one-year-birthday-waders-n-wellies

Have a great week

What a difference a week makes! This time last week we had amber weather warnings and today we had glorious sunshine

The Great Get Together

Our task this evening was to leaflet drop for Slough Libraries and Culture to help promote all the great events and shows they have on offer at the local libraries in Slough on top of the usual services provided by libraries. A great way to get communities together and to learn about the different cultures in Slough.

This week across all Goodgym areas we are working in partnership with The Great Get Together, in memory of Jo Cox, MP.

We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us

Jo’s first speech to Parliament.

So this week we will be working with the Jo Cox Foundation for Loneliness Awareness Week to celebrate the kindness, respect and all we have in common as human beings #moreincommon

There is also a Great Get Together Event arranged by Slough Borough Council on Saturday at Herschel Park from Noon till 4pm with lots of activities for the whole family to enjoy. Pop on down if you are free.

Get in my good books

Great to have Lucy back on her second run with us. After our welcome brief and warm up we headed out of Salt Hill as a team before splitting up into smaller groups taking on our allocated streets.

We focused on the roads surrounding Godolphin Middle School, each group taking a road each and meeting back at the start of the cycle track once the task was completed. Textbook stuff really.

I have to say, of all the leaflets we’ve dropped (and we have dropped a fair few), these ones were the easiest by far. Nice level of thickness to the brochures made them very easy to drop. No knuckles were scrapped tonight.

Daddy Cool

Now we all know 2 things that dads can do to embarrass us. One is dancing, the other is telling jokes. With it being father’s day yesterday and not much more I can say about leaflet dropping I tasked the team to come up with their best Dad Jokes

So here is a taste of the Slough GG runners Dad humour

1. I ordered a chicken and egg from Amazon. I’ll let you know what came first
2. Q. What do you call a dear with no eyes and no legs? A. No idea
3. Why did the dinosaur cross the road? Because there were no chickens in those days
4. What do you call a man with a spade on his head? Dug!
5. Did you return your books late cos you’ve got fine written all over you

But the best-seller was delivered by Roisin

How do you get four elephants into a mini? You put two in the back and two in the front! How do you get four giraffes into the mini? You don’t as the elephants are already in it

So librar-y-rating to know that we have a great sense of humour on top of our running quality and level of community spirit

Task and jokes complete we headed back to base with a pit stop at Godolphin Playing Fields for a hanging competition! I actually managed to out-hang everyone but they all showed me up on the monkey bars at Salt Hill!

Next week we are returning to Ryvers Primary School in Langley to help finish off their learning garden. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/get-your-gardening-gloves-on

Have a great week everyone