Amazing GG Brent tonight!! 2 tasks, 2 teams and 2 run reports!! POW POW

Part one - Elle Energy talks shaking asses with the masses and chopping the grasses

OMG Could it be... A number sixteen, who came out to clean, chop and shift and pick up sticks across the borough, it could be none other.... Than the Brent GG, hurrah and Yippppeee!!

So there I was on this sunshine filled glorious evening with tasks coming out of my.... heavily branded Elle Energy leggings clad bottom!! Not one but two of our community friends requested support tonight and so as not to let anyone down, my glorious crew showed up in masses, to shake their asses down to Harlesden Community gardens... and.... our old pal Col, at the Police Station for a last min help request to make the building a safer environment by clearing some crazy debris!

So with a 9/7 split we head down Walm Lane in our two teams, red tees glistening in the sun and making people stop and stare at all the laughter and good vibeing fun.

At the turning up to St Peters Av, we said our goodbyes and departed, with me leading the 4mile gang to the gardens and Mouse and Sadhana leading on to the Police station. And can I just say it was absolutely wonderful to welcome back so many beloved old faces - Nisha, Dimple, Roshni and Isabelle and...... the incredible Karen back from her half marathon charity run in Kenya!! But as Karen was used to running next to Giraffes in her last big jaunt, she may have been disappointed by the lesser impressive wildlife on offer in Harlesden so chose instead to hit up the Police station for some much needed grounding. With our jungle runner specialist lost to the coppers, it was left to me and crew 2, to Get down, get down and jungle boogie with Gabriel at the gardens and tackle the massive branches for some serious tree surgery!

Along with the jungle bashing affair with our resident dare devil and head for heights honey Liz leading the way, the gardens played host to all manner of other nature filled fun - Watering the plants although Debs mistook my ass for grass at one point, soaking me entirely!! Thank you cheeky monkey!!, clearing litter from the grass with help from some extremely cute local kids, stomping down compost and breaking up branches and with only 30mins to do our best, we wasted no time and threw ourselves in to the tasks with motivation and grit!!

In no time at all, it seemed, the time was up and wishing farewell we turned on our heels once more! Fast pace and gunning for a race, there were a few points where the gang were smashing pace below 7min miles AMAZING aghhh but wait.... was it because they heard from team one that if we swung by the cop shop on route back, we could enjoy some of Colin's home made banana and date smoothies..?!???!!! No monkeying around, because these chasing chimps couldn't be stopped from getting to those bananas!!

After the jungle-juice pit stop we had less than a mile to trot back to base and rejoin our lovely gang once more! So as we reconvened, we shared our stories of the wet and wild adventures on both sides and how maybe one day if we were lucky, we could be selected to join Colin's special boat party VIP's!! Dunno how my land loving jungle Janes and Joe our resident (not so good with heights) Tarzan would do on water..... guess we'll have to see when the invitations arrive!!

Ok here goes - Part 2. Second half of the run report, from the marvellous Mouse

Colin’s milkshake brings all the girls to the yard…

Seven super strong GG Brent ladies (Dimple, Roshni, Nisha, Isabelle, Karen, Sadhana and Mouse) smashed the short distance down to Willesden Green's old police station to assist Colin in his cop shop clearout.

And imagine our delight to be welcomed with by a lovely pear….of juices (clear and cloudy) and homemade banana and date milkshake. Fruity!

After a quick refreshment break we set to work in clearing a variety of items (tents, musical instruments, boxes of ladies shoes that Colin offered to us but alas - despite lots of interest from Karen, Roshni and Nisha - no-one was Cinderella and the shoes did not fit) out and up into the gallows. We didn't hang around… and before Colin knew it we'd lifted and shifted everything bar a bit of tinsel that made a bid for freedom. He was almost lost for words… almost.

And so we moved on to our second task of the evening… clearing out Claudia’s closet! Thankfully there were no skeletons to be found, just a huge variety of theatre costumes and props, which Sadhana created a one-woman show with... whilst pocket rocket Dimple scaled a ladder to heave everything up into the loft.

Jobs all done there was just time to check out the “medicinal herb” garden and the hives on the roof...the bees knees! before we bid farewell to Colin and his trusty sidekick Rob and ran back to base to regroup with the rest of the GG Brent team and swap stories.

And there you have it Fitness Familia. A lot of LOLs and always Good Vibes, I am in love with this fierless, happy and wonderfully weird Goodgym tribe

See you next time!!!

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

A really sunny Wednesday evening, so I got an ice cream whilst waiting for the excited runners to arrive. Unfortunately, our planned painting task has been postponed, but luckily, Colchester in Bloom are always ready to give us something to do, and particularly since the judging is happening soon, we can really help them to spread their workload.

We welcomed new goodgymer Nafisa, and we reminded ourselves about Fay's Cake morning to send her off on her epic bike ride.

Our task was to dead head the flowers in the various border boxes in the town centre. These were at the top of Balkerne hill great, either side of Crouch street, the corner of Headgate and at the Vineyard Street Car Park. This allowed us to do a nice run around the original boundary of Colchester, before descending back to the River via Castle park.

As a warm sunny evening, we attracted a lot of attention as we made our way making Colchester more beautiful, and have a couple of recruits for Goodgym Ipswich when it starts and Goodgym Southhampton whenever that takes off.

When a teenager heckled us saying we were all really slow and ran ahead of us, Tommy and Chris accelerated to show just how fast we could be! All in jest of course.

On the river path, we did a drill where we took our arms out of running to focus on lifting the legs with the hip flexors. All of the runners found it really tiring, and it helps to understand just how a much stronger core can lead to faster running. It also helps to encourage you to engage your core more in running.

As we made our way back to Leisure World, in a slightly comical unfolding, David ran crash bang into Ian. It was comedy. David was looking behind him and Ian had come to a standstill as there was a stag beetle on the path. Using a couple of sticks, Ian rescued the stag beetle, so not only did we help make the town beautiful, we also protected the local wildlife.

Thank's to Sue for the pun!

On an evening which was bright, dry and beautiful.... yes that's right.... BRIGHT DRY AND BEAUTIFUL HURRAAAHHHHHHHH spring had definitely sprung when twelve GG bunnys hopped and leaflet dropped their way to 11k. Yay!!

With the task at hand being the bi-monthly all community leaflet drop, usually the fitness vibes that accompanies comes from track attack. However to bring in the new season I decided to spice things up with a newness here too. So, instead of going round and round, we went up and up - hills that is.... but the best hills near by meant we had to bandit our way through to our neighbouring borough of Camden, running 5 jubilee stations on route to boot. All the way to Swiss Cottage and the hill that leads to Hampstead! Pow Pow.

So the 2 mile warm Up turned into a delightful cruise, basking in the last of the sunshine, we whizzed through Kilburn, West Hampstead, up to Finchley Road and beyond to good old cottage of the Swiss. It's safe to say we were working as a team, as no body was left on their..... Toblerone OMG I can't even take Credit for that terrible pun - step forward please Mouse and take a bow!! LOL

On route, as the team paper chased their way along, handing out all the leaflets on route, I on the other hand could not take enough pics. The beautiful blossoms and natural spring colours coming through, beaming out like they were screaming at us "spring has sprung" and it certainly did give us more Spong in our own steps. Glorious!!

Before long we had arrived at check point one - the base of the hill, just behind Swiss Cottage station and with a neat little one mile distance to the station at the top (Hampstead) the team buckled down for a fast paced grind on that oh so steep and taxing incline.

Taxing maybe, but no one paid the price of surrender, as one by one the pack flew into the home straight, just as the last of the light was etching away and the glow of Hampstead tube took over to light our way in(ham)stead.

Back slapping and congratulations of our epic hill dash over, with a swift turn on our heels we were back to it, pacing back down, with gravity on our side this time! Thank good(gym)ness !!

With a speed split emerging and rapid front pack, the team eventually split in two and with Debs and Enrique taking the lead, group one sped off into the night with epic pace. Group two led by me was a Girl Power affair, but with crew love cheering us on, we recharged the old batteries for one final push the last 2miles back to base.... Of course with lots of stops for photo-calls all the way home. Click click flash, the final hurdles we did smash.

And before we knew it the burning lights of walk lane were upon us once more and one final corner turn led us back to the twinkle of The Queensbury and our home once again. Full team recoup, regroup and stretchy stretch, we finished for the night exactly how we'd begun, smiles and good vibes.

A Beautiful night, filled with beautiful people, doing beautiful things. It can only be GG Brent of course!!

See you next week!!

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

Run report by Ben Cooper!

22 green-fingered runners ran 4km to bring back some nature at St Joseph's Primary School!

Tonight’s task saw us make a return to St Joseph’s Primary School – Neil’s place of work. Give Neil a cheer for setting it up.

Matt and Deb were making their debuts, and thankfully the rain held off for them as well. And Imogen also made a comeback.

The group was further enhanced with the presence of new trainer Ben A, from soon-to-be GoodGym Cardiff. Ben had been to Wandsworth, on Monday, and Barnet, on Tuesday, before finally landing the royal gig – Greenwich. You know you’ve made it, when the starting point is in a World Heritage Site!

Proceedings started on fishy note, and no I am not referring to the smell of Ben P’s hairspray. Sarah, GoodGym Greenwich Trainer, asked the group what their favourite sea animal was. It seemed to stump our resident medical student, Amy. Obviously, she is more at land with working with humans (we hope).

Before Sarah closed the intro, Ben P stepped forward and said he had something to say. Sarah admitted an audible gasp - ‘What was this usurper doing!?’

HAPPY 50th GOOD DEED!

Alas, it was our esteemed trainer’s 50th good deed, and unknown to Sarah, a small clandestine group had been planning some festivities as we couldn’t let the occasion pass without acknowledging it aka ritually embarrassing her.

When I say, clandestine group don’t think ‘meeting under the cover of darkness, in the Old Royal Naval College Undercroft, wearing red robes and chanting’ but rather Alex setting up a separate messenger group.

Unfortunately, most shops have not yet seen the potential growth market of stocking 50th good deeds products, so we plastered Sarah with a 50th badge and helium balloon. Hope we haven’t given you a complex about how old you look. ;-)

The temperature was dropping so Ben A took us a few warm-up dialling up the exertion knob from 1-5. Ben A’s use of the word shimmy also piqued people’s interest with style points going to Brin for his interpretation of a shimmy. Watching him reminded me of the famous French-American fencer Maitre Michel Alaux.

Setting off we resembled some sort of weird hen/stag/birthday/running group mash-up with Sarah in her full regalia. A short run along the river; we do like to show off our * cough * royal borough when other GoodGym tourists come to visit, and we were there.

Headteacher Mouquet informed the group that 1 in 5 school children don’t have a house garden. Hence, the importance of connecting children back to nature. Putting the green back into Greenwich as we always like to do, we got straight to it.

Gareth had kindly brought some spare pair of gloves, although Charlotte and Mridula looked dubiously at them - Black and latex. More fitting for handling corpses than carnations.

Isabella, Linda and Marta picked up the paintbrushes and started painting the fence green. Marta did some touching up of a few plants as well for good measure.

Working on their hands and knees (Sarah is a hard task master), the rest of the group split up into lines do some planting – lavender, carnations and pansies. Alex was assigned the chief compost bag ‘shakey’ ‘shakey’ distributor.

Overhearing a few conversations did expose a perhaps worrying lack of gardening knowledge in the group. For example, ‘we need something to dig a hole’. The top answer you were looking for was a spade, and another conversation debating the difference between a trowel and a trident. From my little knowledge of Greek mythology, I am sure Poseidon, God of the Sea is not pictured with a trowel.

No sooner from fence we had came we were compotted. Great work everyone! It’d be great to see the look on all those children faces when they come into school and see plants painted green. Ha ha.

Then we offshooted back for our fitness session. But not before the obligatory group photo. Ben A even cajoled Sarah to get in the photo. No hiding this week boss.

Ben A led the fitness session. We did some speed interval training around the quadrant (we have quadrants in Greenwich) running at 50% halfway, and then cranking it up to 100%.

Everyone pushed hard and there was still time to play a game like British Bulldog but more in keeping with the fish theme, called Fishy Fishy.

Ben A: "Fishy, fishy swimming in the sea" All: "Sharky, sharky you can't catch me"

Ben A was a shark swimming around trying to catch the fishes. There was also a curious seaweed dance that Ben A briefly showed us. Expect and hope that comes out at future GoodGym Cardiff socials!

With sharks circling, some fishes were swimming too fast and Jo got caught in some cross streams. Jo hope your knee is ok.

Appetites found and how – thanks Ben A, we embarked to the Cutty Sark pub for our monthly social. Alex had secured the Crow’s Nest room, at the top of the Cutty Sark, with great views looking out on the river. Pure Bliss. And Sarah got up the stairs spritely for someone of her rapidly increasing years.

And with most people picking the fish n chips option, the fish theme just wouldn’t go away. The injured Christian also joined the group for the meal bringing some much missing decorum to the evening.

Ignoring Sarah’s 50th get-up, perhaps the oddest sight of the evening was seeing Brin drink out of something other than his now legendary water bottle. However, the change in receptacle clearly seem to knock him off course as he couldn’t seem to find his words at points.

Festivities included Ben C delivering a short quiz titled ‘Know your Place’, testing Sarah’s GoodGym knowledge. Evidently, Sarah does write all her own puns as she demonstrated nearly perfect recall when called on to complete the pun phrases.

Ben P, who had been covertly collecting signatures for Sarah’s card throughout the whole session, presented Sarah with her card which had some great group photos from previous tasks splashed on the front.

And Vickie, designer and socks/trainers combo trendsetter had made Sarah a little artwork.

Following the food, the kind staff, at the Cutty Sark brought, out a cake as made by Mridula. This cake had criss-crossed it way across London from home to work and to its final resting place, the pub’s fridge. Co-worker Helen confessed she had opened the fridge, at their workplace, to admire said cake but she wouldn’t be drawn if she had licked the icing or not.

Whoever, buys the movie rights to Mridula’s anecdote about getting the cake to the pub has got a sure-fire blockbuster on their hands. (PG12 owing to lots of mild peril scenes and rude innuendo about buns.)

Thanks for visiting Ben A! Car-you-diff Ben A some love here. On tonight’s evidence, GoodGym Cardiff is going to go swimmingly!

Mridula have a nice holiday. You can find a link to the cake recipe here.

Lastly, like the Murder on the Orient Express, a lot of people had been complicit in arranging Sarah’s 50th celebrations in the full knowledge that Sarah might beast us extra hard the next week, but we wanted to do something to show our appreciation for all our trainer does.

Next up for the big five-o is our Social Sec, Alex. Don’t worry Alex, we’ve already got your red mankini on order! It will hang nicely next to your blue and purple ones!

Pun credits go to Debs!!!

9 wonderful women and 1 heroic "He" (Enrique) ran through the breeze and the big freeze, took on the trees and left feeling rather pleased. Just your average evening for Goodgym Brent then! Pow Pow

It was all go go goooo this eve as the mighty Brent team hit the road, running 5k to and from Harlesden Community Gardens to help with some log lifting and compost shifting. YAY And what a good cause to give back to, these guys truly are an incredible hub for the community, offering local young people the chance to learn about organic, home grown foods and caring enough to provide an oasis sanctuary for all those that reside in the area. Terrific.

Demonstrating to us her fine leadership skills Debs took the lead at the front of the pack and even had the team working their butts off with double backs and squats to and from on route!!! We'll make a coach runner of her yet!

Speeding our way through the streets of Willesden there was no stopping this nifty crew, bobbing, weaving, leaping and streaking (just to confirm no indecency). In no more than 20mins we had arrived into the welcoming embrace of Gabriel, our Angel from the North (West) who wasted no time in pointing out the load of logs that needed shifting from A to B...... Hummmmmmm we thought and as we surveyed the mountain of trees was this guy barking mad could we finish this epic task in time..... Of course we can it's GG BRENT! POW POW

So it was Hey, Ho, it's off to work we go and go we did with gusto and grit forming an assembly line of helping hands all working in complete coordination with nobody at logger heads. HAAAAAAAA

As I personally took on the dangerous task of lighting the efforts with my massive torch.... Yes Dangerous - because I was being eaten alive by beasties in the bushes, the rest of the crew heaved and huffed their way through and even had time to finish off with a clean, sweep up and haul into the compost heap of leftovers for good measure.

Of course the time flew past in beautiful harmony as the team were cheered on by myself and Debs, singing a beautiful rendition of "Paint with all the colours of the wind" from Disney classic Pocahontis. Time's up.... Thank goodness they can stop singing now..... and it was goodbye from us, but not before we enjoyed a quick turn on the children play equipment with Sadhana knocking out her most impressive plank to date and Luscious NOT lusty Liz working the abs with pikes on the swings. Impressive.

Turning on our heels, we flew back off into the eve with fast pace and lots of grace, just for the thrill, up Huffington Hill and full steam ahead back to base camp.

What a fantastic night, I can honestly say I've never laughed so hard or had so much fun. But hey, that's Goodgym and the best gang of straight-up weirdos in town, my beloved Brent.

See you next time.

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE.

36 brilliant runners moved loads of garden waste for gardening social enterprise Streetscape before saying a sad goodbye to Vicki

It was finally a mild enough evening to meet outside at Papa's and this was good news as our numbers were big this evening. Katie would like to think it was due to her superior run leading skillz but in actual fact it was due to many folk wanting to say goodbye to Vicki. Our favourite New Zealander is heading back to live Down Under and, after three years of pounding the pavements across many London boroughs, we are all sad to say So Long.

Vicki managed the great task of earning her 100 wings last week and whipped off her top as soon as her t-shirt was given to her. Thankfully / sadly (delete as appropriate) she had another top on underneath. With wings newly donned, we were off to the basketball court with Beth for a lovely warm up.

We split into two groups, Tom Benson's group ran down the right side of the road and George and Elise's group ran down the left, so that we didn't mow down all of Lambeth as we sped the 1-mile towards Myatt's Field. We have been visiting Streetscape for over three years now and it is always a physical task. There was loads of garden waste that needed moving onto a bigger pile of garden waste at the back, to make space for more garden waste.

Move this garden waste onto that garden waste, said Alex

We also learnt from Alex that 75% of the unemployed young people who enter the Streetscape programme find employment upon graduation, which is a pretty awesome figure. Of course this is something that GoodGym wants to help, so we kept in our two groups and Tom's group went into the park to do some strength work with Katie and George and Elise's group got stuck in moving some gaden waste on top of other garden waste.

After about 12 minutes, the groups swapped over so that everyone got stronger bits (ankles and core to be exact) by the end of it and we had cleared a massive space ready for MORE garden waste!

I can't wait to receive more garden waste! Said Alex

And with our good deed done, we whizzed off into the night and George took us through some lovely stretches. We then presented Vicki with her leaving gift, which was a school-style tea towel with our faces drawn on it. A brainchild of the Lambeth crew, Tom Benson had set about getting input from all the Boroughs that Vicki runs with. Polly had made the lovely GG border and Emma had been kind enough to make all of the backgrounds the same shade of white. A true team effort and also an interesting psychological insight into the minds of each GoodGym artist.

Wow guys I love my tea towel! Said Vicki 'Now let's hit the pub!

We all know Vicki loves a drink and so how could we say no? Off we went and some people even had some food! Great work Lambeth and we shall miss you Vicki. We look forward to shots of you wearing your GG wings on the other side of the world.

This week 21 glorious GoodGym-ers ran 2.8km/5.2km to sort through a local carehome's DVD collection

This week (the 25th week of GG Barnet) marks the largest ever number on a group run since we started (not including launch day)! Massive shout out to all the new faces this week, helping us smash our PB: Catherine – who actually came last week too, but I wasn't here so still counts as new! Ciara, Jo, Madeleine and Nadia. Give them all a cheer!

Also give a cheer to GG tourists Jessica and Emily! Let's see if we can smash 21 next time!

After a quick warm up by the cinema and several attempts at a number circle, we were off to the Hammerson care home to take on their DVD collection. Damian lead the group up the hill, while I back-marked. It was a real short run but a real steep hill, taking us 1.4km to the home. Once inside, activities co-ordinator Chris offered us water, biscuits and chocolate before telling the team the task. With multiple stations to work through, the team split into groups. Jody took the opportunity to mentally extend her To-Watch list as she sorted through the care home's goldmind of classics.

With such huge numbers we were able to speed through the collection in record time! Heather kindly volunteered to take the team photo as we posed behind our mountain of CDs.

It was then time for the fitness session. Chris let us use the rec room again, which was such a pleasure. Doing the fitness session indoors is wonderful – especially on that soft carpet! A few of the team opted to help some of the residents organise some jewellry, while a couple of the others sat down for a chat. Everyone else joined me for what I like to call the Animal Olympics.

We started nice and gently with the Inch Worm, then worked our way through several different animals, incorporating matching bodyweight exercises at the other side. Chris and Heather were the speediest of the bunch. They picked up some incredible pace on some of those animal walks. Paul requested we include the Aligator Walk (which was actually more like the Spider-Man, if you ask me) and the Shrimp – and even suggested the team all do some burpees. I love when you all request burpees of your own accord. I knew you were learning to love them! Paul also had some smashing plyo pushups, which definitely deserve a cheer!

We soon finished the animal races, said our goodbyes and headed back to base. I took a group back the way we came: 2.8km in total. Damian took the others the scenic route: 5.2km in total. Massive props to Nadia for choosing the long run – today was her first ever run! Super impressive!

Two trusty favourites crowned as this week's Barnet Biscuit: Oreos and Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Thanks, Freya!)

See you next week when we run to Archer Acadamy to build a pond

Pennie

P.S. Thanks for the headline this week, Damian!