Eight excellent people braved the cold and joined me at Clitterhouse Farmhouse to help out, do some fitness and enjoy a taste of GoodGym Brent

With some of us having been at parkrun in the morning and others joining specifically for the starter session it was a while before we were all together but soon we were all at work!

Nails nails nails - the tasks

Patrick outlined the main tasks for us:

• Breaking down pallets to provide wood to make some little seats and planter covers - this involved using mallets, axes, a bespoke pallet breaker and a crowbar. We once broken down we had to remove the nails from the wood and then leave them to dry

• Digging and weeding - Patrick wanted us to clear an area where some invasive nettles had laid down their roots. For this we had to dig as deep as possible and lift the roots out

We set everyone to work and I welcomed Debs and Clarissa who joined for the first time outlining the various ways to get involved with goodgym (group runs, community missions (like a group-run but not led by a GoodGym Trainer), coach runs and missions) and talking about the other benefits such as the Race Team, and the burgeoning community led trips, runs and races which can often be found in the unofficial facebook group.

Fitness fun

After everyone had been working hard we gathered to do some fitness fun. Three sessions were done and somehow I managed to fail miserably to explain nearly all of them...

• First we paired up, played rock paper scissors and the winner ran a out and back short distance, whilst the loser did an exercise for the time the winner was running. We went through squats, star jumps and jumps squats

• The second session was a variation on the children's game stuck in the mud. The variation being that to unstick your fellow runner you had to do three squats together. This was where my poor explaining really hit home but everyone got plenty of action and fun.

• Finally we did a game call 'Every minute, on the minute'. Three exercises, 10 reps, get it done as quickly as possible to give you as much rest time as possible. We did three minutes worth.

As a final bonus we lined up against the wall for a prison squat time trial - Liz smashed it and we told her to stop after 90 seconds.

With that all done we gathered, said goodbye to Patrick and then some of us headed for a jog to Cricklewood before heading home. A great little session and lots of good done.

This week

Sign up for tomorrow's session at Mora Primary School here, and don't forget we'll be celebrating Brent's 5th birthday (again), Claire's birthday and Amy's 50th good deed milestone!

Cheers,
Pritesh