*White Rose Lane Nature Reserve 🍁 *

This morning we were out in nature again assisting WeAct 🌎 at white rose lane nature reserve amongst the big Oak Trees 😄

Wayne & Anne finished volunteering at junior park run and met up with Luan at the leisure centre. From here we ran 2k to the nature reserve 🏃🏼‍♂️

The meeting place was by the bridge going over the Hoe Stream. Here we met up with Chris and the rest of the WeAct 🌎 team. It was great seeing Chris again, Luan did fantastically well running the 2k.

From the bridge we walked over to the other side of the stream where Charlie showed us what we had to do. The main job was ro remove the Himalayan Balsam which grows up to 14ft in very quick time.We also had to removed Laurel and create dead hedges.

We split up into 2 groups armed with all sorts of tools we got stuck in. Wayne & Chris started cutting the big Laural logs into smaller sections while Anne & Luan gathered the Laurel and started to build the dead hedge it was a beautiful morning to be out in the reserve ☀️.

While removing the Himalayan Balsam Anne came across a pile of old shoes under the laurels (No Matching Pairs 🤣)

Luan was loving her time out this morning and found it some interesting facts. The laurel that was cleared today wasn't native to the reserve 🌳 it was brought over in the Victorian age because it was fashionable to have green hedge leaves and branches cover the forest floor, but actually it smothers other plants and trees and shades everything so it cannot grow, hence the reason why it needs to be managed.

Half was through a well deserved cuppa was had and in no time we had done so much this area of the reserve was looking great.

We have many more out door tasks coming up please check the listings , Happy Mothers Day to all you amazing mums. 💐

Sean Coxhead Inspiring Individual Award 2024 Trophy Presenation 🏆

This evening Woking GG celebrated all that is good and wonderful about our Anne 😇

Woking GG had reserved a VIP section at the Sovereign's and it was great to see such a good turn out. All our fantastic crew Adam, James, Wayne, Katie, Alys, Agathe, Maya, Rebecca, Kirsty, Lauren, Julie, Nadia, Luan, Caterina, & Sally Anne who was back in town for a few weeks as she was on uni break (Was great to see Sally Anne) and a lovely surprise for Anne 😄 it was also great to see Phil who joined us to celebrate Anne.

Anne has been with Woking GG from the very beginning she was there at the launch night back in 2016. She has seen many faces come and go but Anne has remained that constant face encouraging, supporting showing kindness to all that have joined. Her dedication and commitment has been amazing and it shows with over 300 good deeds and still going strong ❤️

Anne has taken on the roles as task force and now run leader, and continues to help others with organizing hill training sessions as well as tasks within the community.

Woking GG are very lucky to have her, Anne in her speech tonight dedicated her award to all her goodgym crew who she said also deserved the award but in our eyes Anne is a worthy winner of this amazing award as she also has all the attributes that amazing Sean had ❤️

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.