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

Boom! It's a new year, a new decade and we're back! 13 amazing people joined me for the first GoodGym Brent of the year as we unofficially helped the council of by collecting abandoned Christmas trees and took them to official collection points.

Dealing with the fact that our home, The Queensbury, was closed we were indebted to taskforce member Tabitha who stored everyone's belongings safely. Once we were all ready it was into a super long intro...

• We're back!
• The January challenge is on! As a whole goodgym is trying to reach 8000 good deeds and run 100,000km this January. There's also the competition for the golden trowel between individual areas - we are currently 2nd in the silver league!
• We're partnered with RED January, an organisation that challenges people to be active every day of the month to help improve mental health.

After all that we welcomed Laura who was on her first GG run and then got ourselves warmed up and headed down to Gladstone Park! We reached the tree collection area and the split into two teams led by Sasha and Helen! Both teams led their groups to look for trees and then ferry them back to the collection point. I worked my way between the two teams and before we knew it out was 8pm and ten trees had been collected, five four each team! Maybe it was the timing but it seems the people around Gladstone Park are much better than those around Roundwood Park!

With that we headed back to base and made sure that we stretched before heading home.

A great start to the year, well done everyone!