TEN fantastic fellows joined me to run over 8km on a cold November night to vist the Brent Feeder and help out our old friends at the Canal & River Trust

We were joined tonight by James who was at his first GoodGym run. We welcomed him and did a quick run through of the new... it's all about Christmas parties!

• GG wide Christmas party - details here
• Brent Christmas social (at the Queensbury) after the run on 16th December - fill in details and send money to Tabitha by Friday this week. Spreadsheet here

With the news done whilst jogging on the spot we threw in a quick warm-up and then we were on our way. We kept a good pace mainly to keep warm as we wound the 4km to Stonebridge! We there met Emilie who told us a bit about CRT and told us about the task in hand - a litter pick of the canal.

Everyone donned high-viz, gloves and armed themselves with various tools from grappling hooks to litter-pickers of varying sizes! The new hawk lights from GG Central (thank you!) got their first outing and were much needed. We work hard for 20 minutes and fished out a load of un-opened shopping, many many tins, cans and bottles AND...

• TWO supermarket trollies and
• a full suitcase

Quite the haul. Once that was all taken in and loaded up into the van, we all anti-bac'd our hands and then said our goodbyes to Emilie before another quick run back to base! After that long run, despite the cold it was important to stretch out and then we headed home/for a drink!

A fun night and a really wortwhile task.

Thanks all,
Pritesh

Eight brilliant people came out on a very mild Monday evening to run over 8km for Canal & River Trust!

After everyone had gathered we headed outside and did a quick warm-up. We talked about the news:

• Community Mission coming up on the 2nd March at Clitterhouse Farm House
• parkrun takeover at Finsbury Park with pacing opportunities from 40 - 20 minutes
• European trip to Sofia

It was just over 4km to the Brent Feeder at Stonebridge so quite a long one but we all coped really well and kept up a good pace. We bumped into our old friend Colin from the Old Police Station, counted hundreds of the new public electric bikes and at Roundwood Park ran through the remnants of a fun fair! We did think we might stop to ask them if we could have a go but we figured we should go to our task first... maybe on the way back!

Once we reached our site we split into two teams - the dark side and the light side with Liz taking the dark side team by virtue of her brighter headtorch and Tabitha the ligher side. We worked hard for fifteen minutes scouring the area for litter. By the end we had four big black bags filled with litter and we hadn't even started on the litter in the canal! Great work everyone!

With that it was time to run back, we were getting a bit weary - it's been a while since we've had a long run - but everyone powered on. When we got to Roundwood sadly the fun fair was completely closed which made it all quite eerie!

Once back to base we stretched off and then headed for a drink! A great session - thanks everyone!

Cheers, Pritesh

Eleven amazing runners joined me in Brent, fought the urge to go and see some fireworks, ran 4km, litterpicked, acted as public service announcers and built 75 new homes for the London bat population!

On a weirdly mild night for November a wonderful group gather in Willesden Green ready to give up their evening for the good of others. We said “hello again” to Fi back after a looooong injury break and “welcome” to Jenni and Larissa who were visiting from our neighbours GG Ealing!

Welcome to Brent

With a quick intro and delivering the big news of the week that it’s the LAST social of the year this Thursday we counted ourselves off and then headed on for a short run towards Roundwood Park.

We met Jack just outside the park, which was going to be our base for the evening as we prepared five bat boxes for Jack. We split into groups working on the boxes and Jack showed everyone the template he had made up and off we went.

Bat-boxers

With a larger group than expected a few of us split off from the bat-boxers to litter pick in the surrounding area. During the time we were working we lost count of the number of people who asked us whether were going to be doing fireworks tonight. With Brent usually hosting their fireworks at Roundwood park, it fell to us to let everyone know that sadly the fireworks had moved to Wembley and been the night before - sorry everyone!

We spent a good hour working hard to get the boxes done and the end result was great. Five perfectly formed homes that could house up to 15 bats each!

Bat-tastic!

With all done we posed for a group photo and said our good-byes to Jack. With that it was time for the run back, everyone kept up a good pace and we were back at the Queensbury and all stretched off by 8.30pm! A great night – thanks for coming!

Sign up here for next week, task to be confirmed and don’t forget the social on Thursday!

Cheers, Pritesh

Nine amazing GoodGym-ers joined me to help the Canal and River Trust to litter pick in Stonebridge.

With Ellen and Jack meeting us at the task the eight of us gathered together to hear the news and welcome Tom to GG Brent. In the news this week:

• It's the GoodGym-wide social on Thursday - we're on tour in Hammersmith. All details here, be great to see you.
• Thanks to Danny too for talking about the opportunity to volunteer at the Shoreditch 10k.

With 4km to run to get to Stonebridge we set off at a steady pace and reached the canal in good time. We there met Jack from the Canal and River Trust who ran us through a quick health and safety briefing before we gloved up and grabbed out litter pickers and bin bags.

Everyone paired up and got to work. The feeder levels were quite low compared to usual and sadly that meant that a whole host of things that really shouldn't be in the canal were revealed. A lot of the dumped things were far too embedded and big for us but we worked hard to get the litter we could get from the banks and surrounding areas as well as from the canal. Top marks to Ellen and Rosie who worked together to get a whole suitcase out!

Suitcase!

After 30 mins of hard litter-picking we were done and we all got cleaned up and posed for a photo with our haul. With that it was time to head back. We said our goodbyes and then ran back to base!

With a good stretch done we headed home or to the pub. Great effort everyone - you can sign up for next week's run here, task to be confirmed as soon as possible.

Cheers, Pritesh

Eight fantastic runners braved the mega heat and joined me at Willesden Sports Centre to help out the Canal and River Trust (CRT).

It was another stonkingly hot day but that wasn't going to stop us. With another week at the sports centre we had a shorter run of 3km to get to the Harlesden section of the canal. With everyone gathered we did a quick round of up of the news:

100,000

• We hit 100,000 good deeds last week - read about it here a fantastic achievement by everyone!
• It's the social this week - details to be confirmed but it'll be central London on Thursday!

With that done we were off, despite the heat we kept up a good pace and apart from a random detour through Roundwood Park, and cyclist who was not very up on their highway code we made it safely to Harlesden and met with Jack from CRT.

Watermelon

Jack provided us with some refreshing watermelon and then outlined the task for tonight. We were focusing on the steps leading down to the canal and then a general litterpick.

We split into two groups and got to work. The group on the stairs got straight in there with scrapers and brushes and you could really tell the difference. A number of the locals commented on the work being done and were certainly grateful for it. Meanwhile the litterpickers were working their way up the canal, with a little prodding from me to get every tiny little thing we made a big dent to the litter that was out there. And we found another trolley!

Can we do it?

As we were clearing the last bits of the stairs and getting the last bits of litter done we found that one of the planters was absolutely full of drinks and beer cans. We got everyone with litterpickers together for one last push and blitzed the cans! Fantastic work everyone, there must've been 100 cans at least in there!

With that we gathered all our rubbish bags and the trolley and got it all back to Jack's van before making sure to sanitise our hands and got our group photo! Thanks as ever to Jack for providing us with all the equipment to do our job really well and great effort to everyone - it was hot hard work today!

The run back was quite uneventful but super hard work with the heat still relentless but we all made it and after a stretch we were done and then we went to the pub for a deserved cold drink!

Sign up for next week's run here!

Cheers, Pritesh

Five great GoodGym-ers braved the heat and joined in Brent as we ran over 8km to help the Canal & River Trust

Football might be coming home but if you want something more certain then you can always rely on GoodGym Brent to be doing good on a Monday evening. Today we were off to Stonebridge to help Jack at the Canal & River Trust with some litter picking and general cleaning on the section of the Brent Feeder.

The News

Before we headed off on our run we gathered our group, welcomed first-timer Becca and did a little news update:

• HIGHLY COMMENDED - that's what the GG Olympics committee had to say about the GG Brent Torch - I am feeling very proud right now. Have a look at the full report of a smashing day here.

• SOCIAL TIME - It's the GG Social and we're on tour in Wandsworth this Thursday. It's a bit far from Brent I know but the pub is right by Clapham Junction station if that helps. All the details here - come along if you can.

With that off we went, it's just over 4km to the task location which is one of our longest runs but it felt a lot longer in the heat - that said we did it in under half an hour - good work everyone.

Litter everywhere

We met Jack who got us kitted up and went through health and safety and off we went. The work we had done in previous months was unfortunately covered in loads more litter but everyone went at it hard and we filled loads of bags with litter. We also managed to fish a shopping trolley out of the canal too!

Half an hour went by in no time and we gathered all our bin bags and took a group photo with all we had collected. We were running a little late by this time so we went for a bit more effort on the run home and shaved a good minute off our previous time - excellent! Big thanks to Tabitha for not only back marking but taking on the new role of traffic monitor too.

Great work everyone - come back for more next week - you can sign up here, task should be finalised in the next day or so.

Cheers, Pritesh