Eight brilliant people gathered in Brent for another top GoodGym session! This week we headed to Abbey Community Centre to distribute leaflets on their upcoming testicular cancer event as well as their usual event update flyer.

As expected the rain cleared for our evening's session. Once we had all gathered we headed out to warm up and go through the intro. We welcomed Lee who joined us for his first ever run and we talked about the Big Six (remember you don't have to be part of the Race Team to take part!) and the GG Games!

With that done we warmed up and then headed on to Abbey. We smashed out the 3.5km journey in 25 mins and at the centre met Simone who handed over two big stacks of leaflets. We had a drink of water to refresh and then we were on our way. We headed over to Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate (aka Rowley Way) and split into two teams. One team took the higher side and worked there way all the way up to the upper most part before swapping with the other team and coming down. It was unecessarily complicated but it totally worked! Hurrah!

In the mean time Liz led a second team to the far end of the estate and worked their way at much greater speed (due to fewer levels) and we met in the middle.

A great session and fantastic work to get all the leaflets delivered! With that done we headed off back to base taking a different route through West Hampstead.

Cheers, Pritesh

Seven lovely runners met up on a dark, windy and rather chilly February night, Storm Dennis the Menace had not quite left the building!! We gathered outside to do some much needed warm-ups, and found our circle getting smaller and smaller as we huddled like penguins to stay warm and keep out the bracing wind!

With Tabitha backmarking, we headed down to Cricklewood Library, which is yet to open to the public, but is looking like it will be ready soon, with cafe to boot. Clare and Giuliano met us at the task, taking our group to nine. Wendy greeted us there and explained the task to the group - to organise a room full of furniture (mainly a sea of disassembled bookshelves and chairs - see photos!), to create some amazing space for some more stuff, leaving a bit of space to walk around the edges thrown in for good measure. Wendy was really delighted with our efforts as she had been dreading having to tackle the job alone or with just a couple of volunteers, and also said we were really organsied and great at teamwork, so well done everyone! There still isn't an official opening date for the library, but it will be this year, and not only will there be a cafe for a Saturday post-parkrun cuppa, but also a yoga and pilates studio, so it all sounds very exciting! Keep watching this space.

We headed to the bottom corner of the park for some tempo runs and fitness drills, before calling it a day and heading back to the warm glow of the Queensbury to thaw out.

Thanks again everyone!

What a way to end GG Brent’s January! An incredible 19 people ignored the afternoon downpours and joined me to run 5km and help Mora Primary School!

Lucy, Molly and Giuliano joined for their first ever GoodGym run, Sarah touristed all the way from Bexley and we capped off the evening with a triple celebration of our own 5th birthday (yes we do celebrate all month), Claire’s actual birthday and Amy’s 50 good deed milestone!

Celebrations

As mentioned the afternoon had been super wet and this had then cleared to a cold evening – to combat this Liz led everyone on an epic warm-up session whilst I got held up by various trainer-type things! Eventually I joined everyone, took us through the news, health and safety and general intro.

• The main thing to remember is that we are going to the Queensbury on the evening of the 12th Feb to do the quiz (join for dinner from 7pm and quiz from 8pm!

Once we had gone through the intro and set the backmarkers we set off for the short journey to Mora. Once we got to the school we met Polly the headteacher who was amazed at the number of us and our general enthusiasm to help out. She was worried that we wouldn't have enough to do but as you'll see from the pics there was more than plenty! the task at hand was to empty out a stock cupboard and sort the items and then return them to the cupboard.

With such a large group I left everyone outside to assess the task at hand. As you'd imagine if you leave an energy filled group out in a playground they are going to play. My taskforce instigated a game of stuck in the mud goodgym style. To free those stuck three squats were due.

Playground antics

With the task set and a plan forming in my mind I stopped the game and split the group in two. Nine became the cupboard crew who were tasked with emptying everything out of the cupboard - human chains were very much the order of the day! The second team of ten became the sorting crew - they took everything that was taken out of the cupboard and grouped and sorted items. We had a hall adjacent to the cupboard and this proved the perfect space to get everything out and sort everything.

With such a large task we decided to go long on the task and get as much done as possible. After a good 40 minutes everything was sorted and we had started to return the items. Polly was amazed at how much we had done and I had to force everyone to stop - you guys are the best!

Polly thanked everyone and explained why it was really important to her and the help so appreciated. We said our goodbyes and Polly promised to invite us back for more tasks - we can wait!

With that we headed back to base, stretched and gave ourselves a huge round of applause - what a fantastic evening. We then went on to the queensbury for some cake and drinks to celebrate!

Get yourselves signed up for next week, can we get an even bigger group?

Cheers,
Pritesh