We turned TWO (well officially its on Wednesday)… but we decided to celebrate it with a training session supporting #runwithpride and a community mission - all good things come in two’s! and a few days early…

Read our superstar runner Harsha’s report here on our epic run today : - https://www.goodgym.org/reports/somewhere-over-the-rainbow-goodgym-fly

Two-riffic Two

The absolute best thing about being the Area Activator for Slough is having the team that we have. There’s an age old saying that there is no I in TEAM and that’s especially true when you get involved in Goodgym. The comradery, the friendships formed, the company of different people on tasks and the feel good factor of knowing you have done something good for someone else is what keeps bringing us all back.

There are two things that stick in my mind about our second year. The first one was our epic win at the Get Berkshire Active Awards and the second is COVID-19!

2020 is going to be known as the year pre-lockdown and post-lockdown type of year…Lets look at the pre first!

Nineteen going on Twenty

In the pre world we did 30 Group runs…taking on new task owners such as the Air Cadets and Wexham Parish Hall, we hit milestones (more about that later), attracted new runners and lost a few to other areas (Rachel and Michelle…we still miss you!)

• Jean wrote a beautiful poem
• Sandy delivered her epic speech at the 10 Year Goodgym Birthday celebrations
• We beat the boat
• Had that Ealing Feeling
• Reached 1000 Good Deeds
• Did a Spartan Sprint - Aroo
• Had three Goodgym babies (they just kept popping out)
• A few too many merry nights out
• Did 137 good deeds in January alone
• Won an award! Did I mention that?

Goodgym Bag an Award (GBA Awards)

Life is not all about winning, but sometimes you know you deserve it and boy did we deserve this win!. Getting all glammed up and going to a posh(ish) Hotel with a kinda free bar…for most that would have been enough, but we were there for the win and I think we make an impression! No way we were going to ‘pipe down’!

And the award for Physical Activity for Health goes to…..

Roar, cheer, clap….. what did he say? Goodgym Slough? Best go on stage and get that award then..

20/20 Covid and out

If Coronavirus was a race it would be an Ultra Marathon that you :-

• Didn’t sign up for
• Didn’t train for
• Didn’t want to do
• Didn’t have enough food for
• Didn’t have enough loo roll for
• One where you hit a brick wall every few km’s
• No supporters en route
• Water stations with no water
• And definitely no goody bag or finishers medal

What kind of race is this!

When that initial email came out in mid March from the central team saying we had to suspend all running activities, we thought our days were numbered. No more running, no more group activities, no more face to face coach runs…ziltch, nada, zero, diddly-squat, iota. You can keep your corona….I’m like Jack more!

Mission (im)possible

The lockdown period could be seen as a make or break type of situation…and for us it made us stronger. Prior to C-19 we had hardly any older person missions. The referrals just weren’t coming in. We then went from just 4 in our first year of operating to 33 just in the lockdown period alone!

Sut, Sara, Jen, Ifhaz, Anthony and Chris must take the credit for these. Beds moved, gardens cleared, endless shopping and prescription tasks…even cat food was on the menu…purrrfect!

It good two talk

Harsha, Nisha, Chrissy, Jen, Sut, Naomi, Jenny and I have been making weekly calls to shielding residents now since March. These are very much like our coach calls expect not all are older persons.

With each one of these calls one thing we can safely say is that they put life into perspective.

Stories of homelessness, domestic abuse, loneliness, dementia, chronic illnesses, cancer to name just a few!

The one that sticks out though is the extra effort Jenny went to on VE Day, when she called her gentleman back and had a long chat with him all about this life as a soldier. He was upset at not being able to out on the parade like he had in previous years. No doubt that call from Jenny would have made his day.

Abs-tract training

Exercising went viral! Zoom, You-Tube, Insta Live was the way to go. In total we did 13 training sessions where we:

• Danced with Tanya, Sahib, Moby and Pharell – Cos we got the moves..
• Did alphabet challenges – as easy as A B C
• Decked up for the cards challenge – got trumped
• Flipped coins - easy peasy
• Elimin8ed ourselves – bloody hard!
• Core-some effot in the month of May
• Chased delivery vans, police cars, ambulances in our key worker challenge
• S’miled all round our Slough Half Marathon (race that wasn’t a race)
• 128k in the bag with our Pride Birthday Run

And to top it off we won TWO of the June training challenges!

Zoom Zoom lets shake the room!

We did fortnightly quizzes which started off with the old-fashioned way…one quiz master, 20 questions and pen/paper. This slowly evolved to sharing screen, presentations, 40 questions, catch 22, KAHOOT and even an epic scavenger hunt.

Jen seemed to be on top leader board for most of the quizzes, followed by Sara, Keira and Ciaran.

Sut and I were happy at the bottom….its much closer to the ground down here..though I was on top form for the GG rounds…its just 1980 I struggled with.

Running laps around us

Early on in lockdown, Jean told me that she wanted to keep up with the running but as she’s our national treasure, she wasn’t taking the risk of going out so she would do all her runs in her back garden.

Each day she increased the number of laps she was doing by 1 and because Jean is Jean she wanted to still give back to those in need, so we set up a fundraising page supporting Thames Hospice.

By the time lockdown restrictions eased, Jean had ran 3570 laps raising a whopping £1323!

It’s a numbers game

A year of milestones!

• Ricky, Darren, Sandy, Milly, Kam, Pam, Meera and Sara all joined the 50 Club
• Nisha and Jen hit 50 during lockdown
• Sut reached 100 in July
• Emily hit 100 last week with her almost daily missions in Ealing during lockdown
• And I hit 200 on Wednesday

Special mention time: Sara, Sut and Emily have done so much to help their local communities with almost daily mission tasks – Our Hero’s!

To put it into perspective…Sara achieved her 50th Good Deed milestone on 9th March 2020 (that’s around 20 months since launch) yet in lockdown alone she’s racked up a massive additional 39 good deeds! Amaze-balls! 100 is coming to get ya!

Mascot competition

It was a no brainer really wasn’t it….One of our three babies had to win the mascot competition. Sut-Min came a close 4th, but the single googly eye was too much from the cornea of my eye to handle.

Happy Birthday Two You

As part of this Super Sunday Birthday Celebrations we did a community litter pick. Whilst the first wave of runners were out for their Boris’ Den….the man alive teams were out getting plenty in their 20 minutes of picking! Each team picked and plogged their way around the park, doubling up as Cheerleaders with pickers as pom poms!

Happy 2nd Birthday to us!

Sum-azing Stats!

I like statistics and clearly bingo so here are our stats for Year 2 – see if you can work them out (if you read the report…there are some clues in there)

• Missions (one off tasks for older persons) – Dirty knee
• Missions (well being calls) – Turn on the screw
• Community Missions – (Hit me baby) One more time
• Coach visits/calls – PC
• Training sessions – Unlucky for some
• Group Runs – Dirty Gertie
• Awards ceremony – Kelly’s Eye
• Quizzes – Garden Gate

In total we’ve done over 1700 Good Deeds….There is no Bingo number for that but in Goodgym terms….Stop the press, Look away, Bazinga, Put your phone away, Feel it and BOOM! Its an EPIC number of Goodness!

Thank you to all of our amazing volunteers who have made #TeamGGSlough the success that it is.

Looking forward to seeing what our third year brings for us..

Manjit x