Monday fun day! By Claire Thomson.

Coach Ellie was waiting to welcome first time GoodGym-ers Ervin, Eugenie and Ania, who were joined by Pritesh and Claire in the Willesden Sports Centre Cafe for a quick introduction to GoodGym and each other.
Ellie informed us that unfortunately the paint hadn't arrived in time to paint the walls so we will be doing that next week instead. We were however, required to do some gardening and veggie patch tending instead, a **Turn-ip for the books" but we were happy to adapt and oblige.

On the way out we found Stephen, who was sporting a new look for Spring and we hardly recognised him. We set off in the direction of Harlesden Town Gardens through Birchwood park, spurred on by Ellie´s talk of home-made peanut butter cookies waiting for us on our return...We thought "we bis-get to work"

No need for makeshift torches of bike lights kirby-gripped into our hair to see what we were doing tonight - we had the luxury of arriving at our task with bags of daylight! It was great to properly see the garden and how it´s taking shape, and so many people out enjoying it.

Bob set us to work on the task with the beats pill providing the soundtrack to the evening - no painting yet, but taking plants out of the raised beds and potting them, forking, hoeing and pulling out the weeds - but which ones are which...? We were soon joined by a couple of curious kids who ended up helping out with the watering.
All ready for the earth delivery tomorrow :)

After half an hour of blitzing the raised beds, Stephen got us doing circuits in the playpark - we could never have imagined that these innocent looking fixtures could become instruments of punishment as we squatted, star-jumped, bench-pressed, box-jumped, pull-upped, tricep-dipped on them! Obviously not feeling thoroughly defeated by the circuits, we set ourselves the challenge of building our upper body strength over the summer months, resulting in being able to do a pull-up or two by the end of August! Although Stephen, Pritesh and Ervin seemed to have that one sorted already... We will just have to come up with something even more difficult for them - ha!

Then off back to the sports centre for some strookies - stretches with cookies. Or cootches, whatever you want to call them, as peanuts are full of protein and practically essential for repairing those arm muscles, and by happy coincidence very delicious too.

Till next week xxx