Our task this evening was at one of our favourite local schools, Ryvers Primary School. We have done a few tasks here over the past year mainly in their learning garden, however tonight’s task was to revamp the playground area for the Reception and Year 1 children.

What's the time Mr Wolf?

I had a slight timing issue in getting to Salt Hill on time today so our two Run Leaders Ricky and Darren took charge and led the runners to the task location. Thank you guys for stepping in today.

With Chrissy (and bump) on walk leader role today, a few of us got to the task location to meet Meera and Helen, our task owners and get our heads around the task in order. By the time the runners got there we had some kind of plan of action.

Decimals have a point

And so did Meera with the ‘if it looks like it needs to go in the skip, then it needs to go in the skip’. Fair point, Meera. Don’t think anyone was going to disobey you tonight.

So we split into four teams and undertook the following tasks:

• Lifters and shifters
• Weeders
• Sweepers
• Sorters

To be honest, I’m not sure where Chrissy took the lifters – all I saw was a bike shed (?), but I’m guessing some level of activity was happening behind there!

The weeders couldn’t quite get into the fenced off area due to the HUGE spiders…oh wait they were just leaves, but none the less, Antonio was not going to risk it. However a great job was done on clearing all the weeds growing out of the drain pipes and ground in general. Pam, as always got stuck right into her gardening task – and she looked happy from her head to her tomatoes with her efforts.

Roisin and Emma were on sweeping duty – so many bits and bobs needed sweeping and both had the right idea of ‘sweepers keepers’…although why Emma didn’t want to keep the baby dolls, I do not know!

Denise, Chrissy, Meera and Louisa were on sorting duty. A few tough decisions made on what to keep and what to skip…with Chrissy and Denise both expecting soon, we think the ‘nesting’ phase may have started a little bit too soon.

Using a broken pencil is pointless

Within 40 minutes, the whole Reception/Year 1 area had been re-vamped. What wasn’t needed was skipped, weeds were pulled, broken toys were discarded and the whole play area was swept clean.

These children are going to be bowled over with their new play area – they are going to be so bright that the teachers will have to wear shades.

Meera and Helen were wheely happy with everything we achieved today.

Next week we are back at Parvaaz helping with their garden and car park areas. It’s a short 2km each way run/walk so please do come along.

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.

This is the task we have all been waiting for! When we first visited Jamie at the Jubilee River Riverside Centre, he dangled a carrot in front of us and said that on one of our future visits we could do a river tidy up by getting into the kayak’s!

Jamie has been amazing and always so accommodating that we always have a good turnout to his tasks…but today was a real corker…we had 25 runners tonight! Canoe believe it! And Jamie had a lovely surprise for us

Lets go oar we’ll be late

Needing more time to do a river over our normal 45 minutes, Jamie asked if we could get to the centre a bit earlier. So I anchoraged the runners to meet at base location at 18:00 or meet our two wonderful Run Leaders Darren and Sut Yee at the Riverside Centre in case they were going to be tide up at work (but fear knot… Run Leader Darren still had a run planned for anyone going directly).

With lots to hear about Shindig (thank you Emily and Sandy for attending that)…we did our safety brief and headed out for a quick warm up.

Thank you Chrissy and Gail for being our walk leaders today and our back markers Ruth, Emily, Antonio and Keira.

Meera and her double G

On arrival we met the rest of the team and task owner Jamie. Jamie gave the team the water safety brief, he gave each runner going into the water a life jacket..which Meera was really happy about as it gave her the double G look she had always wanted.

Jamie also did a quick rendition on how to use the oars – all I heard was ..left, right and lots of swinging but Im sure there was more technique involved. So as we eagerly listened to Jamie’s safety brief we were all waiting for the punch line – the actual task information.

Well, there was the surprise. Jamie had ever so kindly decided that as we’ve helped him on so many occasions, that tonight, we would just have fun! Oh Bouy! What an oar-some guy he is…

Whatever floats your boat

So the kayak team (way too many to name however special shout outs to Alex K our Business Development Manager who was visiting us today, Sandip who came back after nearly a year and Chris, who was missing football training for us tonight)….well, they all by hook or crook got themselves into the kayaks and safely shuffled their boats into the River…some went in with grace, others were a bit close boat no cigar type of entrances.

Suffice to say, they all went riverside safely…phew! Best not to make waves…and just hope for the best.

So off they went…whilst Jean, Chrissy, Denise, Gail, Ruth and I stayed back to actually do a plogging task (someone had to do something tonight!)

Wreckon we had more fun anyway!

We collected 7 buckets full of rubbish in the time it took the Kayak team to play games on the River…yes you read that correctly…they played games of sharks and fishes; tag; catching the ball; swapping canoes and even had some races! I did hear that Ricky and Darren are in the bad books! Not that I’m trying to rock the boat but we had a very wet Sut Yee and Sara at the end of the session. I think a revenge attack may need to take place one day…hmmm, next week’s task involves water too – just saying!

Hook, line and sinker

The ploggers were all done in around 40 minutes and with a Mccy D just round the corner that meant only one thing!

Wife Denise (as only wife’s can)…took Husband Darren’s car keys, his wallet and a list of ice cream options!

So when the boat-iful boaters returned all tired and with soggy bums, we greeted them with a McFlurry of cheers…

Fish we had more time tonight as we had a whale of a time (Think I may have gone overboard on the puns today so i'll just stop now).

Next week is our one year anniversary of Goodgym Slough and to celebrate we have two things planned:

1. Drinks at The Henry on Friday 26th July from 19:30 onwards (please note change of date from Saturday to Friday) - please come and join us

2. Our one year task on Monday is back with our inaugural task owner Claire from the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust. Would love to see as many of you as possible on this task https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/one-year-birthday-waders-n-wellies

Enjoy the wonderful sun this week everyone

What a great way to end April! 23 people attending tonight’s session with 5 of them being new. Great to have Denise, Floris, Hannah, Louisa and Dave join us on their first session. Good to see Roisin, Anna and Ella again this evening.

Our task this evening was over at The Jubilee River Riverside Centre helping Jamie with a yard tidy up.

As I had just completed the London Marathon yesterday we offered a walk option on this session which had a great turnout. 6 of us walked down to the centre whilst Run Leaders Sut Yee, Ricky and Darren did all the formalities of the welcome brief and warm up with the runners. Huge thank you to Ciaran from Active Slough for supporting tonight’s session too.

The Riverside Centre is a great community space that is used for kayaking, rowing and paddle boarding. Jamie does a great job at also keeping the Jubilee River area free of litter and has a schedule of community clean ups in place. Some of us will be joining him on Wednesday 29th May for a litter pick. Join us if you can. The community mission details are below https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/litter-pick-the-jubilee

Both the walkers and the runners then made their way to the Riverside centre to meet up with task owner Jamie.

We then divided into 3 small teams and cracked on with the tasks Jamie needed doing. We had:

• The Yardies
• The Weeders
• The Picker

Barking Mad

Darren and the yardies had the task of decluttering the area and making it more usable. Logs were shifted, benches were moved, gazebo’s were rearranged, floors were swept and we still had time for a tree-t with some log posing and with Ciaran joining us tonight clearly at least one selfie had to be taken!

Leaf it out

The weeders were on it today. Jean, Ella, Louisa, Dave, Anna, Kam and Roisin worked hard to remove all weeds and overgrown grass outside the Centre. I did hear one of them say thistle be the end of me but still they cracked on till the end. There is never enough thyme on a weed job.

A bit of a pick me up

Chrissy, Denise and Floris were on litter duty. For a nice change the car park was litter-alley free of litter! And the riverside was also looking gleaming. Jamie’s environmental clean ups are clearly making a difference.

Last but naut least

In no time at all today and mainly due to a great turnout within 30 minutes all the jobs were done. That left us enough time for a speed session for the running team. The walkers by now had started to make their way back to base. With the extra running by the running team we ended up making it back to Salt hill all together

26 Smiles

I can’t write tonight’s report without giving you a brief summary of the London Marathon. It is a truly oar-inspiring event with so many runners running for charities, clubs, with ballot spaces or just the incredibly talented elites.

However they got there, whatever their training was like and no matter how nervous or excited they all were, one thing that gets you through London is the crowds. They anchorage each and every runner with such conviction that you feel like those thousands of supporters are there just for you.

Come hell or high water, those crowds get your second wind. I had an absolute whale of a time yesterday. I didn’t focus on my watch too much and just ran to effort. And canoe believe it! I actually got a new PB!

What made the day even better was the support I had from the Goodgym Slough runners. Chrissy and Pete followed my progress around London and Sara and Ricky were at mile 25 Goodgym cheer point. Plus the rest of the team tracking me online. Phenomenal support! Thank you so much

If you were inspired by yesterday’s race then act on it! It is a once on a lifetime experience and one that anyone who loves running should experience. And as the legend himself says ‘Baby we were born to run’!

Hot off the press

We have our first coach run happening next week! I have been allocated a coach and really looking forward to starting these sessions.

Mission number 3 is set to take place next week.

Bank holiday blues

If you are around next Monday then please come and join us for a community clean up task https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/bank-holiday-monday-community-clean-up

Have a great week