Our second week back and we are highly motivated to keep on top of the January Challenge! With 261km of our 450km achieved those extra weekend long runs are runtastic! Well done to you all... special mention to Chrissy and Darren for hitting some big miles on Sunday and to Jenni who is literally running to as many Goodgym sessions as she can! Keep running, every kilometre counts.

We are well on our way to meeting our January Good Deeds challenge too, so a huge thank you to you all for coming, running and helping with our tasks. A massive turnout this evening!

So tonight’s run out was to Wexham Park Hospital to do a site litter pick. I say litter, but most of the rubbish are cigarette butts however we refuse to let that stub our enthusiasm

With 20 runners this evening and one new brave runner Tierney whose first run happened to be one of our regular long runs! Well done Tierney, you did amazingly well tonight. After the warm up and task brief we made our way to Wexham, picking up 6 of our regular runners Nisha, Jean, Chrissy, Gail, Ricky and Meera en-route as they wanted the shorter run distance this week. Thank you to Jenni for back marking today.

On arrival, we collected the litter pickers, bin liners and gloves and divided into pairs ready to tackle that trash and leaves.

We are used to being in the sick of things so it was no bother to litter-ally get into the nooks and crannies and find our treasure troves of trash.

We like to leaf an impression especially Alistair and Harry. Never seen so much effort made by two blokes, one litter picker and a bin bag!

I’m sad to say that I’ve been dumped! Meera has found a new trainer. She says it’s her, not me, but the new trainer fits her better! You win some, you loose some.

Thirty minutes in we were getting a litter bit tired and had already cleared the site of 10 bags of rubbish so we down tooled, did our group photo and started to make our way back to base.

With many a tired leg from the weekends run challenges (including mine) we slowly made our way back through the streets of Slough. Group runs are such a great way to run! You run, chat, even meet new people along the route! Having convinced two runners last week to join us on our task, my target now is to get more passer by runners to tag along with us, so watch out Slough, I’m on a mission!

Next week’s run is a shorter distance of 3km total run and we are paying a repeat visit to our friends at The Parvaaz Project, helping them with a carpet clean. Would be great to see you there.

Have a great week

An impressive turnout this evening. Great to see new runners join us every week. A warm welcome to Kam and Niamh one their first Goodgym Group Run... Hope to see you again soon..

Long Run Run A Long Run Run

This was our longest run to date.. a whopping 8km in total... well done to everyone for going the distance and a special thanks to Ciaran from Active Slough for being our back marker...

We arrived at the hospital in time to meet our task owner Elisha who kindly supplied us with cups of water before we started

Pick a Pair at the Park

We paired up and started litter picking the main entrance area to the A&E Ward... 30 minutes later and 10 bags were filled... great efforts by everyone

Stormtropper and No One Got Too Big for Their Boots

Its amazing what people leave behind the bushes... Even Stormzy got ditched Why would anyone do that????

Our local hospital does a great deal to look after us so it was brilliant that we could give something back... I think Tim and Maria won the award for most bags filled.... However, the award for best legs had to go to Darren and Ciaran Matching high vis attire as well!

Next weeks Group Run is nice and local.. 3km total run to The Parvaaz Project... Hope to see you there

Have a great week everyone. Well done on a great run and task this evening

Happy Running ! Manjit

14 runners braved the unknown, donned their waders and dug deep clear the stream last night in Sloughs Salt Hill Park!

We had 3 new comers to GoodGym last night, big welcome to Darren, Shalini and Nick who all did a great job last night and got stuck straight in on their first task! We also had three tourists from GoodGym Ealing including myself who was covering for Manjit while she’s on her holidays, thanks for having me!

We started outside the activity centre with a few introductions before heading out for a couple of laps of the park. As our evenings duties were taking place in the park itself we needed to get in a bit of running before we got started! The group did laps at their own pace stopping at the same point in between and doing squats to regroup each time. After a couple of times around we were ready to meet Claire from Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust who was all set with the waders and litter pickers laid out for us!

She gave a little health and safety information to prepare us as best as she could but who knew what we were to unearth…

What lies beneath…

We had two groups, one on the banks helping to bag all the things we collected from the stream and one team knee in the stream itself digging around to get out as much rubbish as possible!

A few mystery bags were uncovered and TONS of litter but probably the worst was the floating dead rat… we decided to leave that where it was to naturally decompose!

I’m glad to say there were no accidents and as much as we all love a comedy fall everyone emerged from the water nice and dry with no leaky waders!

After packing up we had plenty of time for a good fitness session where we had 4 ‘stations of hell’ (they weren’t that bad!) with a mixture of different HIIT and strength exercises at each. We also had sprints in between each station to really get everyones heart racing! We then finished up with a little team sprint off before saying our goodbyes!

Thank you!

Thank you for a wonderful evening and for all your efforts to help your community. It was great to see a new area and meet you all, it’s fantastic to see a new area thriving with lots of members really getting into the GoodGym spirit!

Oops we did it again! 20 runners ran to The Parvaaz Project (www.taha.org.uk) on Northampton Avenue to show what we could do in just 30 minutes.

What a great turnout we had today... new runners joining us every week.. big shout out to Keira, Alex, Helen and Aneta on their first Group Run and for getting stuck into their first task!

Knees to meet you

GoodGym Slough are all about getting to know you and partner work! And this week was no different... A warm up game of knee tag with a complete stranger.. what better way to get to know you hey!

Followed by a short run out of Salt Hill Park to meet Alex again at the task site.

Massive Impact

Alex, once again gave us a warm welcome and overview of their Community Organisation and the impact our support two weeks ago had on their center users.

Swept Away

Always so lovely hear positive feedback from our task owners...our GoodGymers were ready to get stuck in. Alex had quite a few tasks for us this evening... so we divided into 4 groups

• Painters
• Rakers
• Pickers
• Weeders
• and our Chrissy on window cleaning duty

Lovin' it

A lot of brushes did a lot of sweeping! Aneta, Keira and Emily took on the painting duty and in Keira's words... she was 'lovin' it'

Rake it up!

Michael, Ricky, Dan and Alex took to the raking...men with tools on a mission to clear those leaves.... whilst our lovely ladies Michelle, Emma and Jo took great care and pride in clearing those lively leaves

Litter bugs me!

Tim, Rachel, Sandy, Lorraine, Anna and Helen did a great job of clearing the front entrance of the center of litter.. it looked like a different place!

Weed it up

A speedy bit of weeding by Chris, Ashu.... they literally removed anything they didn't like

Rather than ever clean a window... I just tell people they're frosted!

Well... not our Chrissy... those window sills went from a darker shade of grey to pure brillant white!

Wow! What a busy evening we had... but its never quite over!

A 1.5km run back... a bit of out n' back running and a cool down session.... once again... thank you to each and every one of you for the difference you've made on this Monday evening to one of our local community organisations...

We will be back to see Alex in a few weeks time

A holiday? Who wants to rest on bank holiday Monday anyway?

Goodgym Slough Group Run will be on next Monday and we will be helping our local gymnastics club with leaflet distributions in the local area

Have a great week everyone... thank you again for coming along.

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