33 GoodGymers ran between 3-6km, made beds for the homeless and helped Skip Garden!

Thanks and welcome to all the new people that came this week; Chloe, Pierre, Enrica, Joanna, Marium and Emma. We also had a photographer and journalist from Runaway Mag, article and pictures to be released soon.

In the news this week:

1. Tom Benson is organising the GG race team monthly time trial on Sunday in Victoria Park if you want to take part. Full details here.
2. Next week is the GG monthly social, we're on tour down to Lewisham. More details here, it's gonna be good!
3. The BIGGEST TASK of the year is next week helping Grounded Ecotherapy lift and carry cement mix at the Southbank Centre on the Thames. SIGN UP HERE

C4WS Task by Frances:

Frances and Pritesh led 15 GoodGymers back to C4WS to help them make beds for the homeless shelter. It's a quick and simple job for us, but a great help to the volunteers organising the shelter.

Quick & simple

Most of the people in the group were either new to GoodGym, new to the homeless shelter, or in Axel’s case, new to making beds. Everyone got stuck in and made the beds in super-speedy time before we headed over to Granary Square to meet the others – ready for the Time Trial!

Skip Garden Task:

Fifteen of us headed to Skip Garden near Granary Square to help Global Generation. Our tasks this time:

1. Moving planters, pots, tables and bags of soil around the garden. This was like a massive game of jenga.
2. Turn the compost machine and sieve the contents to use as mulch in the garden.

We split into teams, got lots done and rotated the teams - well done everyone! After finishing our 'tasking' Gwen explained about Skip Garden and Global Generation the charity who runs it, here is some of what we found out:

• Existed for 12 years across four different sites in Kings Cross
• The team work with young people in the community to educate them on alternative living
• They keep bees who make lovely honey & there is a HONEY CLUB
• Also they keep chickens who provide lovely eggs for the cafe :)

Fitness:

First off we did a series of strength and conditioning exercises, including squats, press ups, tricep dips and plenty more. We mixed this up with some intervals and balancing exercises.

90 degree angle PLEASE

With both groups now combined we moved onto arm technique. When running your arms are as important as your legs, they are vital for efficiency and power. So to develop our arm technique we got into pairs and practised powering our arms at a 90 degree angle, have an open chest and no crossing of the arms!

Next we moved onto our monthly Time Trial - 880 metres around Granary Square. Everyone did brilliantly! Nice arms! I have a record of everyone's time, if you would like yours please just let me know. I'll be keeping an eye on times over the coming trials and I can keep you updated on your progress.

Sign up for next week here, we are breaking out of Camden and heading to the Southbank Centre to help Grounded Ecotherapy. It's a fantastic task,a really great charity and a big workout - come along and tell your mates too - it'll be a great intro to GoodGym for them!

PB out.

Six Brent GoodGymers ran 8k to Sufra Community Food Bank and Kitchen to weed an area of community garden.

On a bright and airy bank holiday Monday we had a evening of GoodGym firsts! With Elle away on holiday I had the privilege of leading the fine Brent GoodGym crew for the First time, on day release from Team Hackney we set about navigating our way to the Stonebridge Estate. For the First time for any of us on a GoodGym run there were more males than females and it was also the first time I had broken the 8k barrier on a GoodGym run! Top running guys!! 🏃🏽🏃🏃🏻🏃🏿

Following the 4K run to Sufra Community Food Bank and Kitchen we got to work collecting the tooling from the quickly developing community garden and were super impressed with the progressed made. We gloved up and speedily removed all the weeds from a soon to be herb garden digging out and pulling out every weed in sight. In 30 solid minutes of work we dominated the task and cleared the flower bed of 2 full bin bags of weeds.

After a huge thanks from Dina from Sufra we headed back to base with improved pace and navigation making up time as we powered our way home.

A top evening of GoodGym action was rounded off with a series of static stretches before we headed off into the night with a job well done.

Thank you for looking after me and working so hard on the task!

Hope to see you at another Brent Group run soon or if you fancy coming out East Team Hackney would love to welcome you to H-Town on a Tuesday evening.

Elle will be back next week for some more fun on the fun.

Enjoy your week, and good luck to those racing the Hackney half! See you on the start line!!

Smooth Running

Joel