Coming out this morning was quite a shock, with a bitterly cold air. Still, that didn't stop five Goodgymers from braving the weather and supporting the children. Everyone was super clear on their roles and got straight to it. Maybe the team wasn't feeling so awake this morning despite coffee as we didn't move much in the warm up! A countdown from the bandstand and straight to the start where the run soon began. It impresses us every time seeing all children challenge themselves and show true strength of character even at this tender age to go out and beat the elements. Well done children! 🏆 Everybody said their goodbyes and Wayne and Nadia headed onto the train task! Happy Sunday!

The evening was a bit grey and I need to wake up before the training task was about to start. I thought it would be a great idea to stretch the legs before the task. Quickly realising that I would not be able to do this and the task, I decided to get to the leisure centre a little early to grab a caffeine boost. Already there were James, Anne, Claire, Karen and Laura. Quickly having a chat I told them I needed a coffee and does anyone else want one. James said he would and to usher out both Nadia and Luan who had done the same thing.

After the coffees were drunk and everyone had arrived, Kirsty enthusiastically started to welcome all the runners to the session and went in to some details about GoodGym and what the groups is all about. When Kirsty had finished and there weren’t any questions, James, who put on the session went into the details on what we were going to do. James took his time to clearly relay the instructions for this session. The session starts with a light warm up, 1 or two laps of the park, during this time he will put markers to show the turning points for the distances to cover. He said, it will be 6, 3, 3, 6, 3, 3 , 6 with a two minute recover time after each distance completed. James clearly went into detail on how this type of run will help build muscle fibre to both help build speed and endurance ability.

As the session started, I lead the warm up by running a few laps of Woking Park. This was a light run just to activate the muscles and to get the blood pumping around the body. Making our way around and being conscious of the reps we were about to start on I thought that taking a shorter route around the park would be kinder for all of us, while James marked the distances. Heading along the shortcut took us to a flooded path so with a quick turn around we carried on following the outside path of the park. Just after half way round and to let everyone have a little change from the slow running we paused and started to do reserve lunges. After that we went into squats before returning to running back to James where we can start the session.

So having all arrived at the start, James kindly went through what was to be done again before we all heading off for the first 600 meter run which involved running to the marker placed by James and then back to where we started. Everyone went off at their own pace so everyone was able to maintain a pace that was going help push them to the next level. After the first 600m I quickly realised I had gone off too fast and was gassed out before I had even started!! Lucky Nadia had followed with me and was able to help me maintain that pace. Anne and Karen grouped together as there running speeds were very similar, although they were steaming through the recovery times!!!!!

Laura, Claire, Luan and James were all making great gains with their running speeds and keeping to the distances really well. I kept hearing lots of cheers and words of encouragement as other runners were taking their recovery rests, but not too sure if that is the best way to recover? But it didn’t seem to effect the runners and for me, it gave me a huge boost to find the will to keep going at a difficult pace. As we were all drawing to completing the interval session, everyone was giving it their all to finish on a high.

Brilliant, determined and gritty run from all the GoodGymers that did today’s session and we all went celebrate Anne in being awarded with the Sean Coxhead Inspiring Individual Award 2024 for GoodGym. Inspiring Anne, keep being brilliant 😊

Until the next session.

First GoodGym report from me Luan; and first mission marshalling at Jnr parkrun. It was also the first time marshalling with GoodGym for Karen who has been on a similar amount of missions to myself, we are the newbies of GoodGym. We had both arrived at the bandstand early to find John setting up, and were able to chat for a while.

When the other two girls arrived (Nadia and Katie) from GoodGym it turned out to be an all girl group, as you can see from the photo. I think it would have been a bit much if we had burst into song, but we looked the part! Karen and I managed to secure a marshal spot each from the map and a radio. I had brought my own high vis jacket and Karen got one from John which had Jnr Parkrun written on it.

The Woking Jnr Parkrun held an award ceremony at the bandstand, one of the children had run the length of a marathon whilst on the parkrun (Katie whispered that it wasn’t something that was independent to the parkrun group), amazed we all clapped and cheered! There were a number of children who received awards…

Then the start of the run, we all made our way to our positions. All that was left was to cheer. I couldn’t think of anything else but ‘well done’, ‘keep going’, ‘good luck guys’, well done everyone’ and ’almost there’, the parents were really lovely and commented thanks marshal. The children and parents were great runners, some of them were so tiny and young. Luckily it wasn’t raining but there was quite a chill in this winter weather.

The tail end marshals let us know when the last runners had passed our positions and we were to return to the bandstand.

It was a lovely event, I can’t believe how well everyone did to run 2k around the park. So well organised and such great spirit all round!