*Xmas Junior Park Run *

This morning 5 GG members turned up at a very festive junior park run 🎄

Wayne arrived early straight from his 8k run wearing his festive hat that was given by Kirsty last year ❤️. The bandstand looked amazing with all sorts of festive decorations. Shortly after Karen arrived wearing her Xmas hat James arrived after with Rich straight from their 11k morning run along the canal they were dressed in festive mud all over their legs 🤣 Melanie then arrived wearing some very festive leggings Alys arrived last with her festive tutu and she also had a spare one which Melanie put on 🎅 All the runners really made an effort today we had running Turkeys to running Santa's everyone looked great 😀

In total we had 140 runners with the fastest time an impressive 07:34 with 56 PB's great running by everyone.

Hope you all have a fantastic Xmas and hope to see you soon ❤

Yesterday afternoon, Saturday 20th December, Kirsty, Anne, Olalekan, Melanie and Rosa (who joined us for her first ever community mission - Welcome to Goodgym) met at Woking Leisure Centre for a festive community mission supporting Shooting Star Children’s Hospice.

Our task was to promote Shooting Star’s Christmas tree collection service, which takes the hassle out of recycling by collecting trees from homes on Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th January. A minimum donation is welcomed helping raise vital funds for the charity.

The team headed out from the Leisure Center, through Woking Park, around the White Rose Lane area, delivering leaflets to houses and blocks of flats. Covering a few kilometres along the way, the route gave us a little workout with slopes, steps and staircases. The weather stayed calm, crisp, and chilly, ideal once we got moving. Festive vibes were boosted by Anne and Kirsty’s Christmas tutus, which definitely helped spread some extra cheer.

It was lovely to be out in the fresh winter air, combining exercise with something that really matters. Shooting Star Children’s Hospice supports families with a baby, child or young person with a life-limiting condition, as well as bereaved families, across Surrey, South West London and North West London. Every leaflet delivered helps spread awareness and support for this vital service.

By the end of the session, we’d made a strong dent in the leafletting task and everyone kindly took extra leaflets home to continue spreading the word locally.

A tree-mendous effort from the team.

After weeks of hushed whispers, knowing glances and enough rumourfuel to power a sleigh, tonight the truth finally landed: Woking GoodGym had once again received the words we’d all been waiting for: “Could you help pack the Xmas bags at the foodbank warehouse in Knaphill?”

Could we?

Oh yes, yes we could, and no one thought we couldn’t!

Like elves hearing the first jingle of Santa’s bells, we were ready to fill 90 sacks with Christmas time treats.

Each bag received a carefully curated mix of food, treats and love, ready to be delivered across the local community. Every time someone shouted, “We need more cereal!” it sounded like a joyful Christmas emergency.

This task is always a highlight for Woking GoodGym: an evening where teamwork, generosity and seasonal silliness blend perfectly. Knowing that every bag will brighten someone’s Christmas is the best reward.

It was lovely to see Louise from the Woking GoodGym alumni joining us with her son Henry, alongside a fellow alumni Bryan, the 2025 newbies are now well settled in, but of course, veterans, Anne, Adam, James, Katie and Wayne were missed from the production line. 90 bags packed within 45 mins, our most efficient effort yet AND no one lost a finger to the stacking containers, a Christmas miracle!

🎅 Well done GoodGym – another year, another mountain of Xmas bags, and another evening of excellent elf-level teamwork!

Thank you for the photos Nadia! 📸 Welcome to the crew, Zoe - you’ve earned your tutu 💃🏻

Woking GG Xmas Meal 🎅🏽

Goodgym Woking members got together for a Xmas meal last night at Zizzi's 🍕.

What a great turn out last night was it was fantastic to see so many turn up to celebrate a great year together as Woking GG.

Firstly big thank you to Nadia who organised the venue 👏🏻.

Karen arrived first as she was already in town helping out at another local charity 😇 followed by Wayne. The table setting was impressive full of Crackers and decorations 🎗. Adam then arrived without his crutches which was great to see, still not back to 💯 but recovering well. Adam was telling us about his house move last weekend and how grateful he was to his fellow goodgymers who assisted his 😄 Caterina arrived shortly after looking very glam and sparkly ❈. Karen was telling us about her up and coming trip to India 🇮🇳 traveling around for a month just after Xmas, sounds amazing. As the conversation was flowing Kirsty & Bryan arrived followed by Melanie he had come straight from work. Stephanie arrived followed by Julie everyone was looking very festive 🎄. Just behind Anne arrived wearing her GG Shirt as well as her red tutu ❤️ Nadia & Andy arrived followed by Alys who had brough us all little choco treats ❤️. And finally Rebecca arrived straight off the train. It was great hearing about Rebecca 1/2 marathon that she did in New York 🗽 few weekends ago.

Now that everyone had arrived we could order food and drink. Plenty of food was ordered from Pizza's to Risotto's To Pasta dishes everything looked and tasted great.

All in all it was a great night celebrating a great year with fantastic people. ❤️

Woking Junior Park Run

This morning Wayne, Kirsty, James, & Melanie met at Woking Park to carry out various volunteering roles at the junior park run 🏃‍♀️.

The sun was out ☀️ and so were 103 young runners who tackled the 2k course.In total there were 23 PB's with the fastest time being a fantastic 07:32.

Great running by everyone 😄

On a lovely sunny Wednesday evening, Anne was already waiting outside the sports centre as Adam arrived with a coffee to sharpen his energy levels.

While waiting for the other runners, Anne was talking Adam through the route she was thinking of as she had passed plenty of litter.

It wasn't long before Julie arrived and we had a quick catch up as Kirsty arrived. We decided that we will start with the run and plogging as we can keep Melanie updated with our location as we move along. So from the leisure centre we headed towards Woking park along the stream. Onces we got to the bridge we quickly crossed it only seeing very little litter to pick up. We quickly made it down the path to Elbridge Lane. There were lots of plastic bottles which were thrown over the wired fence making it tricky to get hold of but the GoodGyming persistence paid off and we manned to get most of it.

We then turn to go back into Woking park as we recalled the route being messy in places around the parkrun route. Once in to wooded area there were pieces of litter in little spots to the left and right as we made our way through the wooded area, as the litter became less and less which was a great thing to see something else took our notice!

As we followed the path around to join the stream we quickly noticed some Himalayan balsam along the stream. The first batch we saw was too close to the steam bank to try and tackle and remove it but we quickly came across some more further down. Before a word was said we all dived in and started removing them, and quick stamping then down. It was at this point Melanie joined us feeling a little irritated being late from work. She was very ready to get involved and stomp down on some Himalayan balsam and found hearing the crinkling sounds of crashing the Himalayan balsam rather therapeutic.

Once we noticed we had been crushing the Himalayan balsam for a long time! We decided to get back to plogging on our way back to the lake centre with the two full bags of litter we collected.

Awesome work from Woking GoodGymers 😁