With the gorgeous gray of January lighting up the morning session, Tabitha led out with Lee and Josh. With the mission of rescuing forgotten or rejected Christmas cheer in the form of trees disposed on the local streets. With the quick eyes of Tabitha seeing our fallen friends from a distance we were soon journeying to Gladstone Park trees in hand to deliver them to the central pick up location. After an hour scouring the neighbourhood streets the last of the trees kissed the concrete as they were delivered back to the park. The crew jogged back to Beer and Burger meeting location finishing up in 90 minutes. The search and rescue efforts were celebrated over a coffee at Nest to wrap up the mission!

First Bank Holiday of 2023 was also the first Goodgym Brent Group Run of 2023, and the task was our annual Christmas Tree Collection Run Tabitha, Harvey, Kash and Samina met in Willesden Green and jogged to one of the Brent Christmas Tree drop off points at Gladstone Park. We kept our eyes open on the way, and manages to find a few tree branches for our first drop. We then jogged through the surrounding streets looking for any abandoned tree. Kash's super bright headlight was very useful and soon enough we had our first (HUGE) tree. We kept running and found two more , so headed back to the drop off point. As we entered the park we found our forth and final tree, and we dragged them to the sweet smelling pile of trees

Great Job Everyone!!!

As part of the Great British Spring Clean , Brent Goodgym joined up with Brent Council & Veolia who provided us with bin bags, litter pickers and gloves to help clear Willesden High Street of litter . We split into teams of three: Samina, James and Emily tackled the area around the library, Liz, Claudia and Valentina started on one side of the high street, and Pete, Sabina and Tabitha took the other side. After a good litter session we had filled four bags of rubbish plus four bags of recycling

With the street looking much cleaner, Veolia drove up to collect our bags, and we headed off home (some via the pub) knowing that what is good for our environment is good for our mental and physical health too.

Thank you for all the hard work, look forward to seeing you all again soon [Friday's mission at the foodbank here]https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/foodbank-clear-up-a54b7a61-5436-4ac5-9d8f-d43a9cc21d9b)

This evening I was joined by 9 Good Gym runners to help clean the streets of Willesden clean.

We started with the news. There will be a Brent social on Wed 12th February when we will eat dinner and play the quiz at the Queensbury. Oxford has won the bid for the GG Games 2020. Watch this space for further info. Also, big welcome to Velvet who joined for her very first GG session.

After a quick warm-up, we ran around the corner to meet Elayne, who provided us with all of the equipment needed for the task ahead. We split into two teams, one on each side of the road. Starting at the station, we made our way to the Library gathering litter along the way. We collected four bags of litter between us.

On the return to base, Tabitha led a walking group, while Liz led a running group, returning the litter pickers and then taking a slightly longer route back to base. The groups were reunited in the pub for a well earned beverage!

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!

We're back! Nine amazing runners joined me to help Brent council by hunting down rogue Christmas Trees, running 6km in the process

Happy New Year - GGB are back and we had an awesome first run! We said welcome to Darryn and Vero and seven of you wonderful regulars joined us too! Hurrah!

Our task tonight is a GoodGym favourite but the first time we have done it in Brent - Christmas tree hunting. We're super luck that Brent Council have set up a large number of collection points for everyones old trees but this doesn't stop people leaving them out and about. Enter GoodGym Brent!

With ten runners we split into two groups one covering the area near the Gladstone Park collection point and the other by the Roundwood Park point. I led team Roundwood and Liz led team Gladstone.

Here's the report from Liz who led Team Gladstone:

We ran to Gladstone Park to find the recycling point, spotting two trees along the route. Pete and Marcos returned to collect the big tree, while the girls collected three smaller trees and all were taken back to the recycling point. Just a short peer around the corner revealed an enormous tree, which we added to the giant pile. Time for a final photo before running back to find the other team.

Team Roundwood:

We knew we had one guaranteed tree to collect as a twitter user had contacted us directly but on our run to check the collection point we found three more trees! So having recce'd the collection point we already had four trees collected - we split our group and scoured the streets around and between us we found another six trees! Amazing.

In total we added 15 trees - an amazing help for the council and all helping to keep Brent ship-shape! Brilliant effort by everyone, such a January blues busting night and looking forward to many more with you all!

Don't forget to sign up to next week's task helping Queens Park Community Council.

Cheers, Pritesh