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.

News

• This week Goodgym are helping to promote the Earth Hour message which highlights the changes needed at a global level to help protect nature. The task this evening was to help spread the ‘Only Rain Down the Drain’ message and on Saturday we will be over at the Hilton T5 in Colnbrook potting plants, helping to spread the Goodgym message and also supporting their dimming lights campaign. As well as a few drinks afterwards seen as it is a Saturday night

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/earth-hour-potting-plants

• Huge well done to Ricky and Sandy on their half marathon success at the London Landmarks Half Marathon. Sandy’s second half marathon and Ricky’s 2nd of his 4 he is doing in 2019.

• Goodgym seeds - Everyone who attends a session with us this week will get a little envelope of wild seeds to plant. These have been made up by one of our superstar runners and eco-warrior Harsha. Please do take the time to plant them outside. Plant the seeds…save the bees

Let’s Not be Shellfish

Our task this evening was to help Claire from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust with a signage and leaflet drop task. We were helping to highlight that the storm drains are only for rain water and not other everyday pollutants. Claire and her team of volunteers do an amazing job in Slough helping to transform our streams. Check out their website to find out more about their work

https://www.wwt.org.uk/our-work/projects/sloughs-urban-wetlands/

After our welcome brief and warm up, we took the short 2.5km to Manor Fields to meet Claire. Thank you to Ricky for back marking today. We took the scenic Slough Half Marathon route out today, much to the delight of Sara (sorry Sara…next time we will take the back streets of Slough)

On arrival Claire gave us a brief of the task and it was great to have Claire don her trainers and join us in this task today! We always love having our task owners get physically involved

Did you know that pollutants such as paint, oil, cleaning chemicals, rubbish (especially plastics) and even milk get down our storm drains and make their way to our local rivers and lakes and eventually to the sea. This eventually kills the fish and other wildlife. In Manor Park all the waste that goes down the storm drain makes its way to the Salt Hill Stream. If this Stream is full of pollutants then the revival of it will be very difficult to attain

There is no PLAICE for pollutants. Our TUNAVERSE needs our help and we need to stop being SHELLFISH and clean up our act.

Let’s Give a Dam

Prior to starting the task, the Goodgym hero’s stopped to help a damsel in distress (broken down car…bit of pushing…upper body workout done for the day)…First good deed done!

We then divided into four teams of three runners each..with each team going off to cover a different area in Manor Park. One person on gun duty (glue guns!), one on plagues and one on leaflet drop.

I did pre-warn the team that the black glue was sticky…but did they listen? …I was very Pacific with my instructions

We set a time frame of 30 minutes to get as many drains done. With each team covering at least 8-10 drains that pretty much meant every drain in this area is now the proud owner of a plaque.

Hopefully these signs will get the local communities thinking of what they pour down the drains and help with the change in mind-set needed to create the wave of change.

Would you like a 5p bag with that apple?

I’m going to go all David Attenborough on you now and give you some facts that may help you make some changes to your lifestyle that will help you save your planet. Lets face it…if there is one change we can all make it’s with our use of plastics

1. Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide. (and only 9% of it has been recycled)

2. In some parts of the world, using plastic is already illegal. Kenya introduced one of the world’s toughest laws against plastic bags in 2017. Now, Kenyans who are caught producing, selling, or even using plastic bags will risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40,000 (£31,000)

3. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic. You know what you need to do next time you are on a beach holiday Goodgymers!

4. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. Less than half of the bottles purchased in 2016 were recycled — with just 7% of those collected turned into new bottles, and the rest ending up in landfill sites or the ocean.

5. Worldwide, about 2 million plastic bags are used every minute. New Yorkers alone use 23 billion plastic bags every year, according to the New York City Department of Environmental Conservation (which is why it’s so great that the city is getting a ban on grocery bags).

6. 90% of plastic polluting our oceans is carried by just 10 rivers 10 rivers across Asia and Africa carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the oceans.

7. Plastic is killing more than 1.1 million seabirds and animals every year. According to the United Nations, ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine animals each year. Additionally, more than 90%of all birds and fish are believed to have plastic particles in their stomach. It’s because plastic breaks up into tiny pieces in the sea, which are then consumed by fish and other sea animals.

8. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year. That works out to about 100 bits of microplastic over the course of just one meal

9. The average time that a plastic bag is used for is … 12 minutes. and then take up to a thousand years to decompose.

10. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled If plastic consumption increases at its current rate, according to National Geographic, by 2050 there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills

I’ll leave you on that note to ponder about your plastics

Have a great week and hopefully see some of you on Saturday

We were on a follow up task today for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust... leaflet dropping on the only rain down the drain campaign...

500 leaflets 40 minutes... easy peasy with a lemon squeezy (or so I thought)

HISTORICAL FACTS AS TOLD BY ME

As the run into Chalvey (or 'Calf Island' as it used to be known ) was going to be a relatively short one, I suggested that we do a full on fitness session at the end... well! I nearly lost Meera at that stage!

During the warm up I told the team of the story of the Mayor of Chalvey... I say told.. Goldfish have a better memory than I do... so I told them of the little facts I knew of the Chalvey Stab Monkey legend.... it kinda involves an organ grinder, a stabbing monkey and a drunk person.... oh and a funeral! I'll let Google tell the rest of the story

DRAIN RANGERS

Anyway, we did our warm up then headed out to Chalvey... here we divided into 3 teams and hit the houses... Sut Yee literally hit those letterboxes so loudly that I had to explain to numerous householders who opened their doors that we were just leaflet dropping!

The leaflets were reminders to residents that the outside street drains were just for rain

They were reminded to:

• Scoop that poop
• Paint in the drain will taint
• Cooking oil spoils
• Cleaning chemicals causes carnage and so on.. you get the picture

SUSPICIOUS MINDS

As I said... I had a great speed session/fitness session lined up as in theory this task should only have taken 20 minutes.. 30 max...

Call me suspicious... but when I see everyone merrily walking back to the central meet up point... it makes me think that they didnt want to do the speed session!

Sut even had me doing poll poses to delay the run back... she says she was poll-tecting me from Ledgers Rd!

Darren even popped to a friends house for a cuppa ... and his in laws for his dinner

500 ( or near enough) leaflets distributed... we headed back for some slow run vs fartlek running

L IS FOR LAMPPOST

Nothing gives you that feeling of your heart about the leave your body than a good speed session... lamppost to lamppost running was the chosen method today... you will all thank me...one day!

Well done again.. great task.. great company... great running

Next week we are running our longest distance to date... 4.5km each way ( to Our Lady of Peace School) If you can, please could you get to base location (Salt Hill Park Activity Centre) by 18:15 for a latest 18:30 run out time

If you wish to do a shorter distance then please meet us at Mcdonalds on Bath Rd Retail Park

I NEED A DRINK

or two... so please come and join us at our first Christmas drinks do on Friday 30th November at The Corner House in Windsor from 19:30

Have a great week Manjit

Three new runners joined us today on a lovely task with www.wwt.org.uk. A warm welcome to Sara, James and Danielle Sara even did a 10km run this morning! Well done Sara for your double dose of running today... and Super James ran all the way from home (5km run!) to join us...

Mission News

So we have 3 missions on the system awaiting eager runners to go do the deed. One is scheduled to take place in October... If you've had your docs checked and verified please do sign up for one of these missions

After our usual welcome brief and warm up drills we set off on a short 1km run to meet our task owner Claire..

When it rains it pours...

Claire gave us our task brief... we were to label the drains with yellow fish plaque signs... these indicate that no litter or waste products can go down them as these drains lead straight out to the streams and rivers...Rain water only...

We divided into three groups and each group went on their merry way to get plaquing

Blow off Some Stream

The groups had great fun with the gun! Glue gun that is.... even though Claire had pre warned us how sticky the black glue was... it didn't stop us from getting it on our hands! But after cleaning ourselves up we managed to reel ourselves in and crack on with the task!

Fishing for Compliments

Twenty-Five minutes later all the plaques were in position! Great team work and a speedy task done! Nine weeks in and we are getting quite good at this now!

Run out of Stream

On our return run we divided into two groups.. Team Sara took the shorter distance back, with Lorraine taking photo evidence of the extra lunges and squats they had to do...

The remaining team led by James, ran a longer route back. We covered a total distance of 4km there and back

Drink like a Fish at our Social

OK! I'll stop with the puns now!

Thanks to Michelle for suggesting we have a social ( or two!)... and as we are super organised we have already booked the Christmas Drinks Do

** FRIDAY 30th NOVEMBER @ THE CORNER HOUSE, WINDSOR @ 19:30 till late**

As a celebration for the completion of the Slough Half Marathon we will also have a drinks catch up after the Monday session on Monday 15th October at The Salt Hill Activity Centre ( bar in the bowling alley)

Everyone is Welcome

Next weeks run is a long un... 8km total run to Ryvers School for a garden/play area tidy up...

Have a great week everyone and hope to see you next week

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!

A launch with a bang....29 runners smashed it tonight on the first ever GoodGym Group Run in Slough Town

After the welcome speeches and cheers (thank you Councillor Pantelic for opening our 1st Group Run), we headed out of our base location to do a warm up and ice breaker...28 people had to get to 'knowing me knowing you ahah'

I know you

After a warm up game of getting to know you (we exchanged names and our favourite places to go on holiday)...we headed out on a steady 2km run to the stream at Templewood to give this little hidden gem a strim, trim, pick and prune to allow the vegetation to flourish again. We were met by our first task owner Claire from www.wwt.org.uk (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust), who are doing an amazing job in transforming the Salt Hill Stream and surrounding areas. She gave us a brief on what we could do to help this community area and divided us into 3 teams:

• The Waders
• The Pickers
• The Wheelbarrowers

Each team were tasked to complete their given duties within a challenging 30 minutes. Special shout out to Ricky and his wheelbarrowing buddies for showing true grit and determination of the Slough citizens by wanting to finish laying the wood chips along the path (even when everyone else was lining up for the group photo)

Freedom

We bashed those brambles (Sut Yee in particular looked very fetching in her waders), freed the vegetation, cleared the site of 10 bags of rubbish/debris (and a loo seat!) and covered the path with wood chips...phew! A lot was achieved tonight.

We faired Claire a cheerio and see you later and headed back to base in two groups

Steady vs Speedy

Our return run was a battle of speeds.. we divided into 2 groups...Mo's Speedies and Manjit's Steadies..Just for being speedy, Mo's team had a 2 minute penalty wait as Manjit's steadies headed back to base... suffice to say its steady all the way in Slough.. Great effort by everyone!

Great to see so many people join us this evening.... some of us were established runners, others were first timers...whatever your reason to run, it was fab having you there tonight on our launch event...you all ROCK!

Keep in touch?

We have many means of keeping in touch, so please take a look and join in on our journey to help the communities of Slough

• GoodGym Slough website
• Goodgym Slough Instagram
• Goodgym Slough facebook
• Goodgym Slough twitter

We will be running and doing good every Monday from now on, so please come back and spread the word...together we can achieve so much...Next week we are running a 2km route (one way) to help The Parvaaz Project on Northampton Avenue to have a garden make over