Wow….what a weekend! Incase you went on a weekend trip to Mars and didn’t see any of our social media feeds over the weekend….we WON the Get Berkshire Active 'Physical Activity for Health Award' at the awards night on Friday!

It was a truly memorable evening and I will tell you all about that in a minute…but first…lets talk about what we did tonight!

We were back at Sewak Housing to put on a second layer of paint to the skirting and frames. In the main we had the same team as last week, so each pair knew exactly what they had to do.

All formalities and warm up done at base location, we headed out for the 3.5km run to the task with me on back marking (let’s just say it was the heavy legs from yesterday’s Big Half race rather than gin-toxication from Friday night).

Warhol in it to help

On arrival, we got our gloves on, collected our brushes and pots (by a stroke of luck everything was still where we left it last week…or maybe it was a pigment of my ima-gin-ation!

When it comes to indoor paint jobs…I can’t say that we are we are picture perfect however we really do Turner it around and make the areas look all nice and gleamy – way to Gogh team!

As long as we don’t leave the task owners with The Scream…we know we’ve done a half decent job.

• With Ricky and Meera awol tonight it was down to Sutyee and Emily to take the mantel and finish the job…luckily they both been to the task location before so Rembrandt the fun and games they had last time with the small space and tools!

• Jen, who has an ability to get into any space any size!...was painting and yoga’ing at the same time…

• Chris was back to his antics of Dali-ing around

• Jean was in the hallway framing it

• Kam and Kate had the stairs again because I knew they could handle the job!

• Jenny and Lucy took over the upstairs hallway

Second layer of paint on and we were done. Time for clean up! (which can sometimes take as long as the painting itself). All jobs completed …we took the obligatory group photo (with Chris in it this time) and headed back to base.

So….if you want to find out what happened on Friday …then read on!

Let the Evening Be-Gin

With 13 of us traveling up to Reading for the posh awards night, suffice to say we were a little bit excited…Ricky was sooo excited that he actually turned up early!

Being our only GG bloke…every lady wanted to sit with him in the car…but he thought it was only fair he sat on one butt cheek in the boot so that we all had proper seats – what a gent!

Looking all glam and fabulous and not a sports item in sight (well maybe one of us was still keeping it real!)…we had our pre drinks at Nisha’s house and set off on the road trip to Reading.

The awards night was being held at The Hilton in Reading with sports groups, councils from all over Berkshire and of course all the nominees with their friends, colleagues and family members.

After the drinks at the bar, we headed into the drinks reception area where we took every opportunity we could to …take photo’s! Including a red carpet moment..

It was all rather posh Spice and maybe Get Berkshire Active had an inkling of how gin-tastic we were going to be as they put us in the naughty corner…Table 26 (all I kept thinking was…if we win…that’s a long walk to the stage!)

There were 12 award categories in total and we were around 8th on the pecking list to be announced. With that in mind our partners in wine – Meera, Ricky and Sandy were in a right giggling state as they watched Nisha…impatiently wait for our category to be announced…

Goodgym Slough or Goodgym Loud?

Nothing like self-appreciation to make you feel good! During the night, each nominee had a video (mainly of photo’s of their club) playing in the background and most of theirs were 30 seconds long..

Then our clip came on….and the decibels in the venue went up tenfold as each one of our members photo’s or video clips were played…even I had to hang my head in shame at how long we were up on the screen for! We went on and on and on…for all of 2 minutes and 18 seconds…the longest 2 mins and 18 seconds of my life and the loudest!

During the break the CEO of Get Berkshire Active come over to find out who this extremely lively table were…clearly we left an impression…We Sloug’d it tonight!

When our category was called up and they announced Goodgym Slough as the winners of the Physical Activity for Health Award…the ruckus of roars was so loud that I couldn’t even hear the background song they chose for us! It was phenomenal to win! The team were upstanding (luckily so was I)…the joy of happiness from the team filled the venue and I still haven’t stopped smiling yet..(other than maybe at mile 11 of yesterday’s Big Half!)

What a brilliant night we had…and to come home with a lovely award just topped it all off.

International Women’s Day

This year’s IWD is on Sunday 8th March and the theme is #EachforEqual …an equal world is an enabled world.

At Black Park parkrun they will be holding a IWD event by encouraging more females to participate in the event and asking everyone to wear something purple…one of our newest members Jenny will be on Run Director duty on Saturday, so please go and join in.

On Saturday will be doing a bramble cut back task on Farm Lane on Saturday to allow access for a local Church via that alleyway. Details of this Community Mission are listed here - https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/cutting-back-brambles

Have a great week everyone

It only feels like yesterday that we started the month of February and now can you flippin’ believe it…it’s nearly March…March has just crepe’d up on us for sure..

But before we end the month there are exciting things going on this week to end February with a bang:

• You batter believe it…it’s pancake day tomorrow…Sara cant wait to make flippin’ delicious pancakes
• On Wednesday we see the launch of our neighbouring Goodgym in Windsor and Maidenhead – Good luck Amy…we are all rooting for you..
• And on Fri-Yay a fair few of us will be at the Get Berkshire Active Awards in Reading hoping for a home win! I’m getting a bit emulsional just thinking about it! But regardless of a win or a runners up award…it will still give Goodgym some frame and fortune! (these puns will make sense as you read on!)
• Then on Saturday, you have the opportunity to run a leap year parkrun!

Paint No Sunshine

The weather over the past few weeks hasn’t keen kind to us…so by a stoke of luck we had an indoor paint task today at Sewak Housing.

So with the task brief and risks covered off, we did a quick tag based warm up and headed off the 3.5km to the task location. Thank you Ricky for back marking and Jen for leading the way.

That’s how we rock n’roll

On arrival the centre manager gave us the low down on the areas that needed some care and attention.

So we spilt off into smaller units of 2/3’s and set to splash the paint with our colour instincts (and each pair were asked to come up with their own puns!)…lets see how punny they really are: -

• Ricky and Meera were on skirting boards duty…Meera had a great pun but Ricky gave her the brush off! Ricky also did nothing tonight but look glovely

• Jen our Queen of Puns...was also on skirting duty, but today she was:- Skirting off duty... Making me emulsional... Getting wired... And didn’t want to take the gloss off it but she was doing a good job!..

• Chris was on a roll with the porchway wall – He made it all white on the night

• Jean was on frame duty - she really is our frame and fortune (is it all starting to make sense now??)

• Kam and Kate had the skirting on the stairs and bannister to do…making sure that not a drop was wasted.

• And Helen and Gail had the upstairs landing – they had a bit of a waiting frame as they were sharing one brush but they had a stroke of genius on how to make that work..

And the winner of the Most Punniest of Painting Puns is......Jen

Forty minutes in and we breathed a cyan of relief as we came to the end of our task.

Tool’s down, we cleaned the brushes, the rollers and ourselves and made our way back to base.

We are due back again next week to give it all another going over, paint nothing stopping us now...we are on a roll..

Coming up

On Friday, we also have a community mission to help The Thames Hospice with a clothes sorting task. Sign up details are below: https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/helping-thames-hospice-sort-through-spring-season-items

Have a great week Manjit

Before we talk about today, lets discuss what happened yesterday….

Good friends don’t let you do stupid things alone

…No they join you in a 6km, 20 obstacles of walls, barbed wire, mud pit, swamps (ok slight exaggeration), loaded carries and fire walls....We were Down with the Brown and ready to conquer our fears yesterday.

A few months ago a few Goodgymer’s decided to embark on their first Spartan Sprint Race…first for most of us though legendary Harsha, who is well accustomed to being covered in mud also did the Spartan Super in the morning before joining us in the afternoon for the Spartan Sprint race! Well done to our very own Warrior Woman!

Word to your Mudder

So we had the Dirty Divas – Sut Yee, Sara, Sandy, Harsha, Lucy, Ritu and me and the Mudder Brudders – Darren and Ricky. We had an absolute blast wading through mud pits, butt high in fowl smelling water, climbing walls of all types, crawling under barbed wire, carrying goodness knows what for loops in the forest and all other manner of obstacles and assault courses to get to the bit we all wanted to do - the fire jump! Well Lit!

It was team work like dream work as we had vowed to stay together and help each. We stuck to each other like mud!

Though Ricky is in the naughty corner today! He played dirty – his offer of a helping hand out of the mud wasn’t infact an offer of help,…more like a shove back in!

There were moments when we actually thought ‘Did I really pay to do this?’ but we did it! And had so much fun together as a team…Same time and place next year?

‘Don’t be afraid to fail…be afraid not to try’

So back onto today and the reason why you are actually reading this report!

Wet paint…unless it’s dried

We were back to Sewak Housing to help finish off the lounge and hallway painting that we started a few weeks ago. 11 runners made their way to the task owner’s premises! Great to have Hannah join us on her first run with us tonight. A few of our team did a mission at the weekend with the community group that Hannah works for where they cut back vegetation and trees to increase the amount of light that reaches the River.

We arrived in two teams at Sewak Housing this evening. I led the first team and Ricky and Darren led team 2. On arrival, our task area had changed slightly but that was no issue for us! The gloves were donned, the paint trays, brushes and rollers were unravelled and we got to work. We’ve all brushed up on our painting skills now…though us Spartans (as we like to be called now), did have a few upper body mobility issues tonight! Clearly not as Spartan as we thought we were.

• Sandy, our shortest runner pulled the short straw and got to paint the window frame.
• Emily,Jen and Kam were on the downstairs hallway
• Darren donning his new black T was on stair duty
• Jean, Pam, Jenni and Hannah took the upstairs hallway
• And Ricky and I…well we had a cuppa and a nice chat!

Bish bosh brush and the paint ran out…as did our time. So Team 2 headed back to base in order to miss the brush hour whilst Team 1 cleaned the area and packed away the items as we had a slightly shorter run back. We did our task owner farewell and vowed to come back on a community mission to finish this area off.

Next week we will be leaflet dropping for our local libraries so please come along and join us.

This must have been the wettest Monday Group Run recorded for us...the rain did not relent for the whole evening and we were drenched within minutes of setting of from base camp!

Even though we had a few drop outs tonight (totally understandable...)...we also had a new member join us! A very warm but wet welcome to Abigail.

Everyone got to base in good time tonight as we had a long run out...and with a few things to celebrate tonight we didn't hang around.

All white on the night

So this was a return visit to Sewak Housing as we were finishing off painting the lounge and downstairs hall way for this community project who support young people. Last time we went there were 18 of us and hardly any space to move, but with 9 of us tonight, we could move without being brushed off.

We had a few sore legs today post the Ealing Half Marathon....Sandy ably demonstrated how a half marathon finisher walks up the stairs post race with great grace! Ricky preferring photo duties over painting...meaning I had to crack on and help...with a few wise cracks from Mr Kloay on my lack of hands on approach over the past year...dont take that tone with me !

We actually did manage to get a good coverage of white paint on the walls. Although, we were short on a few tall people to finish of the cutting in at the top...the bottom was fine...plenty of us were in the short threshold.

In a paint job you get to see peoples true colours....Antonio is like our very own Italian artist...great care is taken to ensure perfection. Darren got paint on him before he even picked up a paint brush - a bit slap dash. Ricky is better at moping over painting...he nearly swept Sut off her feet.

It's just a hill..get over it

So our trio of superheros did a little run yesterday and still came along to tonight's session in the pouring rain! HUGE congrats to Sut, Sandy and Ricky and conquering the Ealing Half! We are all very proud of you and I have to admit to having some race envy seeing all your social media posts! Bring on SPARTAN next week!

50 shades of Daz

Massive congratulations to our main man Darren for hitting his 50th GOOD DEED tonight! And for bringing in cakes to celebrate.

So a few of us have known Darren a while now, even before GG Slough. And one thing I think we can all agree on is that Darren is the type of person who you can rely on for anything! There is no better compliment we can give him! He is our run leader supremo, a task force enforcer, a mission verifier....There should be a meme about Darren....'We all need a man like Daz. Well done Mr Jones!

Tonight's task was our first indoor paint job! And with a new task owner.

We louvre being able to help local community groups with Monet for nothing jobs which really does impact their environment.

For us, it’s a great way to go for a group run and do something surreal for a community group that needs our help. A bit like Charlies Angels or Challenge Anneka! So thank you to Sewak Housing for our task tonight.

It’s good to talk

So much going on this week and so much to say (nothing changes there!)..so let’s start with what happened last week… Our girl Sandy delivered the most epic speech you will ever hear from a Goodgymer on ‘what Goodgym means to them’ at the 10 year celebrations event last Thursday in London.

I won’t lie, I did shed a tear or two (as did Emily…though Ricky kept his Kool and kept the gang in check). It was such a funny, from the heart type of speech that nearly everyone there stood in line to congratulate Sandy on it afterwards…

We are just so proud of how GG Slough has so positively contributed to the ongoing success of Goodgym. Goodgym is 10 years old this week and what an amazing story/journey it has been.

It’s our birthday so lets paint the town red!

So 10 years on and the concept that grew from delivering a newspaper by our founder Ivo to a local neighbour has grown into a movement that is so positive and rewarding for everyone involved.

To celebrate #GG10, each Goodgym area this week will be taking photos of their local group with a landmark of their town.

For me, Slough in party-icular means many things. It’s my birth town, the town I was educated in, got my first job in, got married in and now the town that educates my children. People have a perception of Slough but let’s not ‘paint’ a bad ‘picture’ of our town…it really is an amazing place with so much to offer. Even David Brent (aka Ricky G) thinks our town is the best… so much so he wrote a song about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mlevv9oFuA) plus we have our very own Rickyyyyyyyy!

So our group photo tonight was around a theme over a landmark!

Slough Means Business

Did you know?

• Slough Trading Estate is the largest estate in a single provide ownership in Europe?

• Over 500 businesses are based in the Estate

• Top blue chip companies like Centrica, O2, Yell, Virgin Media, Akzo Nobel and MARS are all in our town

• Our trading estate provides employment for over 20, 000 people!

Get the ‘picture’…Slough is a great town.. So our photo represents that Slough is a mean machine when it comes to Commerce.

We’re like one big organism, one big animal, yeah? The guys upstairs on the phone, they’re the mouth. The guys down here, the hands. I’m probably the humour’

Yes David - we totally agree!

When you gotta Van Gogh you gotta Van Gogh

Ok, so let’s get back to the business at hand…going to help a local community group with a freshen up! 18 runners ventured through the streets of Slough town heading towards Wexham for our task. Thank you to Sut, Rickyyyyy and Emily for back marking and a very warm welcome to Naomi and Ifhaz on their first group runs with us.

Sometimes, when you get to task, things aren’t always quite as you expected. But that’s no issue for us…although we needed a pre prepped room in order to crack on with the painting, we did have to spend a few extra minutes getting the lounge and hallway prepped.

With so many of us out tonight we did have to use our wits to ensure everyone had a task to do. With limited rollers, Ali had a stroke of genius when he realised that using a roller brush with no roller handle was actually a great way to get the wall covered!

Harsha tried to brush off all the remarks she was getting about her paint in a plate improvisation.

Jean had Sut’s back in another ingenious way of making sure Sut was safe whilst masking the hallway window frame.

And Harry’s height was in high demand as he was pulled from wall to wall to do all the high areas.

All in all, for the time we had on site, we did manage to get some level of coverage on the walls – we might have been a bit sketchy and a little bit shady, however, we did our best and plan on coming back in 2 weeks time to finish it all off.

#SuperSaturday

On Saturday we will be doing a community clean up at Farm Lane. So please do sign up and I promise there might even be cake involved. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/improving-something-somewhere-in-slough

Have a great week