Monday evening in Willesden Green and a crack team of six meet in a pub to see what's in store for them this week...

Practice Run

So a lovely bunch of you joined me on a damp and grey February evening and to make matters worse we were in the sorry position of having no task! No matter, you all said you were up for a practice run to the section of canal that Brent looks after to help me out with our task in a couple of weeks.

A big GoodGym welcome to Nadeige who joined us for the first time in Brent. A welcome back for the first time in 2018 for Caroline, nice to meet you for the first time Pete and good to see Danny, Liz and Uthman again this week.

Paper Map

With everyone signed in and my intro and head-count done we set off towards Stonebridge. Liz kindly backmarked for us ensuring that no-one was left behind and I exuded confidence leading the way with map clutched in hand promising that I had learnt the route.

Remember your green cross code

Not long after we'd left we encountered our first crossing and Caroline got a little shock as I insisted we wait for the green man, with that all settled we were sure to cross properly and I think there were no hard feelings ;)

The group kept a steady pace with Danny and Uthman occasionally stretching their legs ahead of us and we reached our destination in a decent 32 minutes. We had a look around the patch of the 'Brent Feeder' that we'd worked on before. It certainly looks like it will need our helping hands when we come down in a couple of weeks which is a shame but we're hopeful that our continued efforts on the canal will change attitudes in the area around littering. While we caught our breath I talked, puns, socials and more puns and we chucked in a little fitness session and Uthman showed he was really up for it by getting some press-ups and a plank in too!

With that it was time to head back and we were pretty much on the same pace for the journey back. Kudos to Danny and Uthman for 'reps' of Roundwood Park and well done to everyone for a great run (8.54km by my calculations, forgot to strava it - map above) and for the high spirits all evening.

Next week we have a new task helping Mencap in Willesden Green, you can sign up here, it's a shorter run but if we have time we'll do some fitness too. If you're inspired by the run today then sign up for the task on March 5th where we'll be doing some clear up work on the canal!

Cheers, Pritesh