"I heard the residents of the Kingsgate Estate were planning a litter pick on their flower bed planters. I guess you could say they're really digging deep to clean up their act!" or 'Five on a secret trail '.

Lizzie, Becka, Pete, Josh and Lee met up outside Willesden Green tube station on a drizzly monday evening, did a warm- up then jogged 2 km to the Kingsgate Estate off Kilburn High Road, with Pete leading and Becka backmarking. There they met up with Diana and Ajay from the Kingsgate Community Centre (and from One Kilburn community groups). Ajay provided litter pickers, gloves and refuse sack holders and Pete provided some refuse sacks then we proceeded to go to various raised planter beds around the estate and do litter picking on them to make them clean for the local residents on the estate. Quite a lot of refuse was collected including recycled waste, all manner of things were encountered including general waste paper, bottle tops, cans, plastic, someone's valuable house keys and even a large pressurised canister. Ajay is a major part of One Kilburn an online shared space that has been created alongside local community groups in Kilburn. It brings together different projects, ideas and activities of the past, present and future in one online space to share learnings and support conversations on how together local residents and the council can turn their ideas into action. You can learn more about them here https://onekilburn.commonplace.is/ It is a starter project and if successful might expand across the country. Having cleared 8 or 9 planters we then took direction from Diana regarding our refuse sacks, handed back litter pickers etc to Ajay, had a group photo, wished them well then jogged up to Brondes Age, a nice sports bar in Kilburn for a quick drink to celebrate Lee's 50th completed task and Becka's recent birthday - many congratulations Lee and many happy returns Becka.

Well done team for a constructive and fulfilling evening!

BOOM! Christmas has hit GG Brent and thirteen wonderful people joined me to run over 7km to help put up Christmas decorations for Kingsgate Community Centre!

We were joined tonight by Sasha who was on her first ever GoodGym run and we all welcomed her as part of the intro. In the news this week: Christmas party season is upon us with the GoodGym wide party on Friday and the Brent dinner after the run on the 16th.

Once we were all warmed up and everyone ready to go we set off for Kingsgate. It was a fairly uneventful run but we did have to contend with slippy leaves and a short blast down the High Road (too busy!).

Once at the centre we were shown what needed to be done - two main tasks: decorate the tree and put up lights across the ceiling of the main hall. We split in to teams and got to work. It was soon clear that there were a few too many of us to be working well in the small space and with only two tasks... so to the hills!

Look at us - for the second week in a row we had hill reps at GG Brent! I took a small team off to do some hill reps with James suggesting the roads with the better hills. Three reps working our way up the hill thinking about the right technique and remembering our arms, legs and posture. With that done we headed back to centre to swap over. For the second hill session we did a hill run rather than reps and wound our way through the streets heading up three hills to match the hill reppers!

And with that done, the centre beautifully decorated and many group photos done it was time to head back. We went a slightly different way to avoid the high road on the way back and before we knew it with everyone putting maximum effort in despite the freezing temperatures we were back at base! There we stretched and then headed inside for a deserved beverage!

Great work everyone - next week it's a short run to Cricklewood Baptist Church for (hopefully) some more indoor tasking. Sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh

Ten amazing runners ran 5km and superbly decorated Kingsgate Community Centre!

A wonderful group gathered at the Queensbury ready to get into the Christmas spirit with a wonderful task to decorate a community centre. It's been nearly a year since the Brent group visited Kingsgate so we were all excited to get going.

After a quick intro where we congratulated Liz and Pete for their attendance at the GoodGym Christmas Party - so good to see Brent representing - and reminded everyone that our Christmas social will follow the run on the 17th we headed off into the night for our run towards Kilburn.

An uneventful run saw us make good time and we arrived at the centre just before 7.30. We met with Gavin who told us the task at hand - Christmas lights to be artfully put up and decorations to go on the tree and around. We split into lighting and decorating teams, fired up the Christmas tunes and off we went!

Rosie was our Chief lighter and she first worked with Pete and Tabitha to get one half of the room lit and then with a whole host of others to get the other half covered - great work! Everyone else smashed out their decorating skills and made sure that it wasn't just the lights that stole the show.

To make sure we were all kept active while the lights were finished off we split into two groups and took it in turns for a bit of plank action.

• five press ups
• 30 seconds reverse plank
• 30 seconds side plank (both sides)
• 30 seconds front plank and then try to hold till 60 seconds

Amazing effort from everyone!

With everyone exercised (ahem...apart form Tabs!) we took some group photos with the lights and then headed back to base!

Fantastic evening all - let's hope I can find Christmas related tasks for the next couple of weeks!

Cheers, Pritesh