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

A bumper turnout this evening on one of our long runs to support our local NHS Hospital…the warm May sunshine also helped. It had been a while since we had been at Wexham Park Hospital so we knew areas of the carpark would need a good pick-me-up and it didn’t disappoint us!

With a 4km run out this evening we knew we had to run a tight ship with the welcome brief and warm up. It helped that I could not talk much today (sore throat and cough!...I know…lucky our task was at a hospital!). Thank you to Darren for taking the front runner role today… I knew my place was at the back

Refuse to give up

I probably should have stayed at home today with a cuppa coco but where would my Goodgym spirit be if I had done that. Not only me but Jenni and Sara, both holding injuries came out to join us today. This is the true beauty of Goodgym…we refuse to let any litter thing keep us down.....Well done Ladies And also it was return of the Mac…well of Michelle anyway! So good to have you back on a run with us.

Don’t let the Dr see your Butt

We’ve done enough hospital tasks now to know that the main cause of litter are those butts! Even though the hospital is a smoke free zone it makes litter difference. So with our sweepers and pickers in hand we split into pairs and systematically made our way around the grounds.

Pick Up Lines

The theme of todays task was to pick things up…be it coke cans, Mcdonalds boxes, cigarette butts, crisp packets or car park ticket stubs. So each pair were asked to come up with their cheesiest pick up line…the winning line would be the pun of the task

Oh the cheese! They really were bad… in no particular order, the worst of the worst were:

• Gotta Light?
• Are you French as Eiffel for you
• You light up my life
• As I said to Harry…I litter-alley have no pick up lines!

Told you they were bad

The best of the bunch were:

• You must be tired as you’ve been running through my mind all day (by Dreamy Darren)
• Is your name Google? Cos you’ve got everything I’ve been searching for (By Sexy Sara)

And the winning pick up line was from Jenni to her partner Ricky…

Did you just drop that litter cos you got FINE written all over you…Ricky just bagged himself a good one here

Pick up lines sorted for a future night out....we down tooled in time to take the group photo…another fine job done tonight…6 bags of rubbish collected

Breaking News!

• Huge congratulations to Sut Yee on her half marathon in Leeds on Sunday. She went, she conquered, she vowed to go back! Sign of a good race
• We did our 3rd mission last week – moving a sofa
• And had our 1st coach visit

You got a 50 dollar bill get your hands up!

Ricky’s got a 50 dollar bill….today is his 50th Good Deed! Well done Ricky…all that GG tourism has won you Slough’s first runner to achieve the 50th Good deeder certificate

I also achieved my 50th good deed recently however as I am not one for attention (ah-hem!)…I was blown away by the card and flowers the team got me for achieving this milestone! Thank you all so much

It’s so rewarding to know that with each deed we have helped someone..be it a community group via our Group Runs…a socially isolated older person via a Mission Run or helping our town via a Community Mission. I look forward to seeing more of our Slough runners achieve these milestones very soon!

Have a great week everyone…enjoy the sunshine and see you next Monday

This evening’s task was our first one with The Royal British Legion in Cippenham and we were down to paint their fence in some nice shade of harvest brown

The Royal British Legion aim to promote and fund-raisers for the Legion and have a number of upcoming events including a That That tribute group! It only takes a minute so have a look at their facebook page for more details. They have an amazing use of space for members/non-members to hire too at very reasonable rates too! Next social maybe?

https://www.facebook.com/cippenham.legion/

We welcomed a new runner today, Luke. Hope you enjoyed the session and well done for your initiation test at the end – pleased to tell you that you passed! After we did our welcome brief and warm up we headed out the 2.5km distance to Cippenham to do our fence painting task. Thank you to Ricky and Sut Yee for back marking this evening.

Sitting on the fence?

Loving the lighter and milder evenings. For those of you still sitting on the fence about joining us, maybe it’s time to brush off the cobwebs on those trainers and give us a go?

We really are a welcoming group and welcome runners of all abilities. One of the regular runners always volunteers to back mark so no-one is ever running alone at the back.

The great thing about all of the Goodgym tasks we do is that you really do feel good afterwards. Our run distances vary to cater for all runners and the tasks we do for the local community groups do make you leave with a smile on your face.

The Other Side

On arrival we were greeted by our task owners Tracy, Bridget and Paul. They gave us the roll down on the task which was to basically paint a really long fence. The paint had kindly been donated by Akzo Nobel so all The Royal British Legion needed were helpful hands to do the job.

Luckily, before we really got stuck in..Brigit kindly informed us we were on the wrong side of the fence..it was the other side that needed painting!

Got it Covered

Gloves donned, paint pots at the ready and off we went…to the right side!

Painting is very therapeutic…and its when we have a task like this that I see the challenge the runners set themselves… Sara and Ruth were literally not leaving tonight until the panels they were working on were painted!

Harry and Alistair…well actually just Alistair got more paint on his clothes than he did on the fence.

Super speedy Sut Yee worked her inner Ninja skills and used two brushes at the same time!

That’s how we roll

In 40 minutes we had the task done…well actually, it wasn’t as we still had 6 panels to go (we will be returning next Monday to finish these off).

One runner did have the gaul to ask me why I don’t get involved in the tasks….I told him not to take that tone with me…lucky no fence was taken

Easter Monday - Earn those Eggs!

Next week is a Bank holiday however we will still be running/doing good. We will in fact be returning to finish off these fence panels…there might be an egg or two at the session next week

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/painting-fence-vs-fitness-session-with-litter-pick

She told me to walk this way…

On Monday 29th April we will be offering a walk option as well as our standard run option. The distance will be 2km and we will be going from our base location at Salt Hill Park to The Jubilee River Riverside Centre for an environmental clean-up task

Please do come and join us if running is not your thing but you want to experience the Goodgym good deed task

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

Aroo! I am Spartan!

Fancy a day of being Tarzan? Rolling around in mud? Climbing 10ft high obstacles? Crawling under wire nets? Great! Well then come and join a group of us who will soon be signing up to the Spartan Windsor Sprint Race (5km with 20 Obstacles). It’s on Sunday 6th October in the Bagshot area. We have a 20% discount code! Email me to confirm your place.

Have a great Easter everyone. If anyone is around on Friday, then please come and join me and other Goodgymers/Run With Active Slough runners for our annual Easter Egg Trail in Upton Court Park at 10am

News

• This week Goodgym are helping to promote the Earth Hour message which highlights the changes needed at a global level to help protect nature. The task this evening was to help spread the ‘Only Rain Down the Drain’ message and on Saturday we will be over at the Hilton T5 in Colnbrook potting plants, helping to spread the Goodgym message and also supporting their dimming lights campaign. As well as a few drinks afterwards seen as it is a Saturday night

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/earth-hour-potting-plants

• Huge well done to Ricky and Sandy on their half marathon success at the London Landmarks Half Marathon. Sandy’s second half marathon and Ricky’s 2nd of his 4 he is doing in 2019.

• Goodgym seeds - Everyone who attends a session with us this week will get a little envelope of wild seeds to plant. These have been made up by one of our superstar runners and eco-warrior Harsha. Please do take the time to plant them outside. Plant the seeds…save the bees

Let’s Not be Shellfish

Our task this evening was to help Claire from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust with a signage and leaflet drop task. We were helping to highlight that the storm drains are only for rain water and not other everyday pollutants. Claire and her team of volunteers do an amazing job in Slough helping to transform our streams. Check out their website to find out more about their work

https://www.wwt.org.uk/our-work/projects/sloughs-urban-wetlands/

After our welcome brief and warm up, we took the short 2.5km to Manor Fields to meet Claire. Thank you to Ricky for back marking today. We took the scenic Slough Half Marathon route out today, much to the delight of Sara (sorry Sara…next time we will take the back streets of Slough)

On arrival Claire gave us a brief of the task and it was great to have Claire don her trainers and join us in this task today! We always love having our task owners get physically involved

Did you know that pollutants such as paint, oil, cleaning chemicals, rubbish (especially plastics) and even milk get down our storm drains and make their way to our local rivers and lakes and eventually to the sea. This eventually kills the fish and other wildlife. In Manor Park all the waste that goes down the storm drain makes its way to the Salt Hill Stream. If this Stream is full of pollutants then the revival of it will be very difficult to attain

There is no PLAICE for pollutants. Our TUNAVERSE needs our help and we need to stop being SHELLFISH and clean up our act.

Let’s Give a Dam

Prior to starting the task, the Goodgym hero’s stopped to help a damsel in distress (broken down car…bit of pushing…upper body workout done for the day)…First good deed done!

We then divided into four teams of three runners each..with each team going off to cover a different area in Manor Park. One person on gun duty (glue guns!), one on plagues and one on leaflet drop.

I did pre-warn the team that the black glue was sticky…but did they listen? …I was very Pacific with my instructions

We set a time frame of 30 minutes to get as many drains done. With each team covering at least 8-10 drains that pretty much meant every drain in this area is now the proud owner of a plaque.

Hopefully these signs will get the local communities thinking of what they pour down the drains and help with the change in mind-set needed to create the wave of change.

Would you like a 5p bag with that apple?

I’m going to go all David Attenborough on you now and give you some facts that may help you make some changes to your lifestyle that will help you save your planet. Lets face it…if there is one change we can all make it’s with our use of plastics

1. Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide. (and only 9% of it has been recycled)

2. In some parts of the world, using plastic is already illegal. Kenya introduced one of the world’s toughest laws against plastic bags in 2017. Now, Kenyans who are caught producing, selling, or even using plastic bags will risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40,000 (£31,000)

3. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic. You know what you need to do next time you are on a beach holiday Goodgymers!

4. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. Less than half of the bottles purchased in 2016 were recycled — with just 7% of those collected turned into new bottles, and the rest ending up in landfill sites or the ocean.

5. Worldwide, about 2 million plastic bags are used every minute. New Yorkers alone use 23 billion plastic bags every year, according to the New York City Department of Environmental Conservation (which is why it’s so great that the city is getting a ban on grocery bags).

6. 90% of plastic polluting our oceans is carried by just 10 rivers 10 rivers across Asia and Africa carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the oceans.

7. Plastic is killing more than 1.1 million seabirds and animals every year. According to the United Nations, ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine animals each year. Additionally, more than 90%of all birds and fish are believed to have plastic particles in their stomach. It’s because plastic breaks up into tiny pieces in the sea, which are then consumed by fish and other sea animals.

8. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year. That works out to about 100 bits of microplastic over the course of just one meal

9. The average time that a plastic bag is used for is … 12 minutes. and then take up to a thousand years to decompose.

10. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled If plastic consumption increases at its current rate, according to National Geographic, by 2050 there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills

I’ll leave you on that note to ponder about your plastics

Have a great week and hopefully see some of you on Saturday

This evening’s task was a nice #runlove one! We were supporting our local Council with a leaflet drop for their Active Slough team, highlighting all the great sporting activities on offer in Slough. With over 100 sessions a week, there has to be a perfect match for everyone in there somewhere. From running, pilates, yoga to boxercise, futsal, Zumba and many many more….Check out their website to find which one could be just your type http://www.slough.gov.uk/leisure-parks-and-events/active-slough.aspx

As a double whammy we were also supporting a local running group and their Beat the Boat 10k Race in June with a leaflet drop. A few of our regular runners will be doing this race so would be great to have more Goodgymers on board… https://www.runface.co.uk/beattheboat

Life is Short But Running Makes it Seem Longer

Our target area this evening was in the heart of Langley…so that meant a nice 4km run out from our base at Salt Hill Activity Centre. With a heart-warming brief given with all the love and care possible, we warmed up our souls (and toes with toe tagging fun) and headed out with Darren back marking.

You’re a Bit Fit

With it being the week of romance there is no better way to get your groove on than by activating those romantic endorphins with some exercising. So we turned on our running watches and started to run…In no time at all we had reached Langley and were ready to do the deed …. (of leaflet dropping)

Is That an Energy Bar in Your Pocket….Or!!!

No…they are just leaflets!

We divided into small teams of two and took on a few different streets each. With our love hearts we set off to fulfil the lives of others…with the information in the leaflets

Oh My Quad

In order to get those runners legs nicely toned we did a series of lunges…from walking lunges to courtesy to a straight forward front lunge… Alistair has quite the knack for a courtesy lunge!

You Must Be Tired as You’ve Been Running Through My Mind All-Day

Task complete, we started to head back to Salt Hill Park, but only after doing some fartlek speed work along Quaves Rd…Nothing better than pushing those legs to fatigue….

Well done to everyone who came along this evening. Next week’s task is a bit more closer to home. We will be weeding the tennis courts in Salt Hill Park… so will do some lap work around the park before descending on the task

Have a great week Manjit