Ten fantastic people joined me in Brent for another night of doing good and getting fit. We ran just over 5km, did some mega weeding and celebrated not just one but two of our awesome runners getting to FIFTY good deeds!

A big Brent welcome to Naomi who joined us for the first time. In the news this week we talked about the next social on the 5th September, the fact that Exeter and Trafford GoodGyms are opening and finally the big news...

• Tonight was the both Karen and Samina's 50th good deed! Amazing!

After the excitement of this news I calmed everyone down, they had to get through the good deed first after all! With a quick warm-up dispatched Tabitha led the way to Clitterhouse and before we knew it we were at the Farmhouse.

Once there we met Tina who handed out tools and gloves and we split up to get weeding. Tess handily showed us what was weed and what wasn't and we got to work. Pete and Vinay then moved on to help spread hops on to the compost heap. Aside from smelling deliciously like beer the hops help with the composting process.

Hopping good time!

As well as the actual hops we had another reason to be hopping with joy at tonight's task as we discovered a frog in the garden - he seemed to be having a good time hopping about but we left him be!

With 30 mins of hard flying by before we knew it it was time to leave. Thanks for all your hard work, Tina was certainly impressed at how much we got done! Claire led the way back and once back to base we stretched and properly celebrated Karen and Samina's achievements! Fifty good deeds each is an fantastic and a ton of good deeds between you - wonderful!

Cheers,
Pritesh

Ten fantastic people joined me to run over 7km to help out at Abbey Community Centre!

Having seen the heavens open quite dramatically I was unsure on who'd be brave enough to come out for GoodGym tonight but I wasn't disappointed as the group gathered.

After a quick intro where we congratulated Marcos on becoming a dad and welcomed Emily from GG Slough and ran through some of the upcoming 10th birthday celebrations we warmed up and then were on our way.

The journey to Abbey is a nice one but hills are unavoidable and I'd tried to engineer routes that made it as easy as possible! The journey there was about 3.3km and everyone worked hard to get there in good time.

Once at the centre we said hello to Simone and then worked out the the best way to handle the tasks we had. Bryony had listed out what we had to do. I handed out team leader roles to Emily and Tabitha and off we went! The task was to clean out the kitchen stores, the tea trolley and various other bits and bobs! We also checked the stock was in date and rearranged things to make them fit better. After 30 mins of hardworking everything was done and we even managed our bonus task of stapling copies of the newsletter together! The resounding memory was finding hundreds of sugar sachets in amongst all the various boxes!

With everything done we posed for a group photo and then headed off! Well we had a vote, longer route with fewer hills or go back the way we came with more hills on way back. We went longer and everyone went for it keeping a good pace all along!

Once back to base we stretched and the. We were done, another top night in Brent.

Cheers,
Pritesh

Ten wonderful runners joined me in Brent as we headed over to Clitterhouse Farmhouse to help with three different tasks and run 5km in the process!

We said a big welcome to Pippa who joined GG for the first time, we heard all about the GG Brent Olympics effort – big thank you to Amy, Liz, Pete, Samina, Tabitha – our wonderful team! And… we cued up the fact that it was Tabitha’s 100th good deed!

With a long intro over we let Tabitha lead the run for her 100th deed and I backmarked. Once at Clitterhouse we met Patrick who kindly offered everyone water and then set out the tasks for the night:

• Rob, Vinay and Sadhana were helping to take some amazing pictures and other paraphernalia down from inside the café that is going to be demolished and re-built
• Liz, Amy and Georgie were on painting duty
• Samina, Pippa, Karen and Tabitha were helping to build trenches for a willow dome

We set everyone off working and before we knew it we had been hard at work for 40 minutes and it was time to go! We had a group photo by the lovely sunflower and then with Patrick’s offer of freshly baked scones if we come every week (we’ll see what we can do!) ringing in our ears we set off again!

On the way home Amy and Tabitha did a mini good deed helping a lady whose shopping bag had split by picking up at least a few hundred aubergines for her and then we continued on our way. Once back at base continuing the treats for Tabitha we let her choose Rob to lead the stretch which was very eventful as only one of his stretches matched anything that I would normally do – top work and thanks Rob!

With that all done it was time to finally congratulate Tabitha on her 100th deed – an amazing achievement and from one of our most dedicated and certainly the most fun of our runners here in Brent – congratulations to you!

With that done we headed to the pub for some cake and some well deserved drinks.

Cheers,
Pritesh

Eight amazing runners correctly predicted there would be no rain and joined me in Brent to help NW2 Residents Association with some mega weeding and ran over 3km!

We said a big GGB welcome to Lisa, Sula and Vinay who joined goodgym for the first time. So great to have you with us! And welcomed back an Brent veteran, Sadhana joining for her first run in over two years after injury! Welcome back!

After a quick intro we split into a running group with me and a walking group with Liz! The walkers set off and we took a slightly different route which immediately put is in the path of a caterpillar that was clearly lost! Lisa carefully helped it out of harms way and we were off again!

Reaching our destination we saw Marie and her team on a traffic island on the busy Cricklewood Broadway! Surely nine of us weren't all going to be working there? And we weren't!

Marie led us off on to the pavement and then showed us the areas that needed chopping back, weeding and litter picking. We were sooned joined by the walking group and so everyone dived in! Some of the weeds were hugely overgrown and there was so much litter in there too! We remarked on what a difference it makes between different local authorities as the main road is the dividing line and one was so much more looked after than the other.

After a good 25 minutes of hard work it was time to stop with the NW2 volunteers, the Cricklewood Baptist church volunteers and our group we had made a huge difference! We weren't able to finish everything off but I am sure we will be back!

We posed for a group photo and then split again, this time Liz took the runners and I went with the walking group and before we knew it we were stretched, back at base and ready for home.

Thanks everyone and see you next week - I am just finalising details but we should be off to Clitterhouse Farmhouse for some more weeding work!

See you then,
Pritesh