Hi, Hi We're your weather girls (and Dan) and have we got news for you......You'd better listen "It's raining Brent, oh yes, it was raining Brent but a special (eight)" Came, for: 4Miles, lots of smiles and a mean clean up of Harlesden Methodist Church. ITS RAINING GOODGYM

If you didn't catch that - The rain was frighting!!! So much so I needed a pep talk call to Ruth at head office to get me pumped to hop on the old moped and brave the tube strike fall out traffic, in the torrentials, to get to my crew!! The love oh for the love... It's deep and its real!

And to my delight 7 more die-hard Goodgymers greeted my soggy entrance, with gleeful smiles and motivated madness in their eyes! ahhhhh my running familia and happy to see them was I!!

Welcoming Newbie Amy into the folds were the sexy six sisters with soul - Liz, Karen, Tabitha, Debs, Andrea and of course Moi!!!And it couldn't be a weather girls special it weren't for our "Tall, strong, dark and Lean. Rough and tough and never meannnnnnnnnn - Dan Heller of course!

Humidity is rising (uh rising), barometer's getting low. According to all sources, the street's the place to go (we better hurry up) and hurry we did! 'Cause tonight for the first time (this year)Just about half-past seven For the first time in (2017) history. It's gonna start raining Goodgymmmmmmmm!!!

Okay I'll stop with the singing now! So hot to trot we buzzed down to our task for the eve, Harlesden Methodist Church for the big clean! Slap bang in the heart of Harlesden High Street, this place is more than just a community church hall. The fantastic team offers a range of amazing services for the locals including counselling, homeless soup kitchens, clothing trade events, funding drives for the community, you name it they do it! So what better place to give back than here!!

So we set to work for a 40min blast of spruce up power, but not to let the fitness slide, simultaneously utilised the copious amounts of stairs for walking lunges and squat jump drills, taking it in turns to power up those glutes and work on those quad muscles too!!! BOOM

It wasn't long before DJ Dan's music was blasting out cheering us on through the task and drill, helping the time to fly by and before long - DING DING.... Disco over, it's time to roll out once more.

Packing up swiftly and back on the road quicker than you can say glitter-ball, the team got straight back to it, engaging those newly woken up butt muscles in hill sprints and solo dashes all the way back to base, the final 2 miles!

So despite the rain, the cold and the awol tubes, Goodgym Brent, proved once again, that obstacles do not exist when you are determined, motivated and jumping into Jan with POW POW Power, enthusiasm and Goodgym-Vibes!

See you next time!!!

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

13 Goodgymers, Dropped 200 leaflets for 2 worthy causes on a wintery but wonderful Monday night in Brent.

Greeted by the awesome sight of not one, not two, but three new faces and a whole bunch of awesome oldies too, I was over the moon to be back from hols and straight back into the warm embrace of the one and only GoodGym Brent.

With welcomes and housekeeping underway, the team were introduced to the task for the night - The Bi-Monthly track session and leaflet drop. This week I was delighted to welcome Tania's contribution for the Brent Social counselling services, an opportunity for low income and out of work local people to be supported in achieving positive mental health, through talk therapy in the borough of Brent.

With no time to waste the team were off, speeding down the road and engaging with all the community along the way. Newbie Rebekah was the woman with the effective 'wink' and used these Eye-rresistible (sorry) charms to drop the most out of the whole team.

After the one mile dash to Willesden Track the team didn't rest on their laurels and got stuck straight into the the most Hard-Core strength and abs session known to mankind. Strength work started with: *Walking lunges *Piggy back runs *Squat sequence Quickly followed by walking held planks and scissor kicks for..... well as long as I could do it so that was a looonnnnggggggg time!!! HA HA

Mixing in with the strength work the team bashed out a series of speedy 100m sprints followed by 200's and recovery runs. It's safe to say they gave it a Good-Gym run for their money (again sorry, it seems my holiday away has been plenty of time to come up with the cheesiest of all cheer puns)

After sweat there was the stretch and one last dash home to freedom. Despite the cold and teasing drops of wintery rain, there was only good vibes and good times had by all, what a way to get back in the game!!

Another successful dose of community goodness and athletic throw down to boot. There's only one place to fuel body and soul and that's ramping it up with West London's finest - GG Brent.

Until next time.....

DO GOOD. FEEL GOOD. INSPIRE

On a wet Monday night, seven GoodGym Redbridge runners took on the challenge of delivering flyers for an ‘Active Together’ initiative and ran more than 8km in the process.

Spurred on by the knowledge that “skin is waterproof”, the magnificent seven met at our usual home – Wanstead House Community Association – for the usual briefing and catch up. Excitingly the group was joined by three Redbridge first timers – Alice, Caitriona and Tim.

With the usual GG news dealt with it was time for Sam from Vision Redbridge Culture and Leisure to talk us through the nights task. She explained that we were flyering for an initiative called “Active Together” which aimed to engage with the residents of local housing estates and find out what would make them get out and be more active. A brilliant task and one well aligned with what we do at GoodGym.

Without further delay, the group headed off up Wanstead High St in the direction of the Hermitage Estate. Armed with bags of flyers and one fire key for accessing the buildings the team set to work distributing the goods. Each building was three of four stories high, which meant the added bonus of a stair workout in each building. With Vision’s Sam and Trainer James, doing relay to open the doors, the group soon made quick work on posting the flyers and within 30 minutes the task was complete.

With 30 minutes left on the clock there was still time for a short 4km run around Snaresbrook before heading back to base for a cool down stretch.

All in all a brilliant task which saw GG Redbridge help make a real difference in the local area, get a little bit sweaty and a lot fitter. And the rain even held off.

Great work everyone. Same time next week?

P.S. Big shout out to Peter for the photo taking!

On a beautiful warm summers evening 23 amazing GoodGymers ran 4K to the FoodGrowers Group on the Rhodes Estate to transport and lay over a tonne of mulch/compost as well as water the life back into 48 fruit trees on Queensbridge Road.

The evening started with a huge welcome to our new GoodGymers and some GoodGym tourists tasting the Team Hackney flavour for the first time!! 👏🏾👏🏽👏🏻👏🏿 The big announcement of the week was the new Parkrun/GoodGym partnership which will launch on the 10th of September at and after MileEnd Parkrun. If you fancy a timed 5k then a dose of GoodGym Goodness sign up here as an added incentive I hear the trainer for the GoodDeed is amazing!!😀😉

We took off to get our muscles activated and joints mobilised on a quick pulse raiser to the council buildings where we burst into a dynamic warm up and a series of balance developing and muscle strengthening lower body exercises including a dose of some Plyometric fun as we bounced our way to success. After this headed of on the the rest of the 2k run to The Rhodes Estate in Dalston to meet Amy. With a little panic when I couldn't find her all was good again so to celebrate we burst into some relay action to keep up the tempo!! A few sprints, some skips and a trail of walking lunges had up ready for some carrying action!

Splitting into 2 groups we had the waterers and the mulchers! Not to mention the diggers. Forming a slick action line to dug the soil into bags, boxes and wheelbarrows before speedily carrying/pushing them about 150 meters to the fruit trees on Queensbridge road! While the waterers did there thing filling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with water and expertly watering the trees. With a super sprint finish we managed to water and mulch 48 fruit trees to the exact tune of 1.5 tonnes of mulch and 150 gallons of water!! Great job team ⚡️⚡️💪🏽💪🏾💪🏼💪🏻🔥🔥.

As we were running a little late we had a shorter than normal options for the first race back to base so we ran a staggered race with the runners wishing to run a faster starting later and later then chasing the pack down with every stride!! Needless to say it was an epic battle all the way back with 2 disappointing exceptions, Nico and Rich the super speedsters decided to take a short cut to ensure victory was there's. We have seen this behaviour from Rich before but leading is Nico astray to is highly disappointing!! Lucky you don't don't educate the people of the future (oh my wait)).

A series of static stretches and ballet pirouette finished off a great session!

Next week we are off to Gillett Square to help maintain their amazing kids adventure play equipment!! Be amazing if you could come along sign up here.

A huge good luck to everyone running their goal running performances this weekend know we have a few Super speedy parkruns and a debut 10k over the weekend!! If you fancy joining the GoodGym race team to get money off race entries and an amazing Race Team Vest take a look and sign up here.

An early heads up that we will unfortunately be saying goodbye to Kirsty in a few weeks as she moves up North for a new and amazing new job😢😢 in tradition we will be heading out for drinks and food to say goodbye on the 20th of September. Be great if you could come along to our combined monthly social and leaving drinks/eat after the group run.

Have a top week,

Technically Smooth

Joel

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