First group met at Beer & Burger including Tabitha, Pete, Hannah, Josh and Samina. Shaking off the long weekend slumps, the journey to Kingsgate began.

A little sweaty and out of breath, the team meets Ajay at the task location, with Beatriz and Lee also joining.

After a short walk and instruction the gardening team got to work, pruning, sculpting, weeding, and creatively building a floral masterpiece in the garden plots. The end result being so perfect local residents came outside to enquire and offered to water them moving forward.

Feeling fulfilled and content the team started the uphill climb back to consume a well deserved drink and chip or two!

Meg, Josh, Tabitha, Amir, Karen and Pete all met at Beer n Burger on a warm evening in Willesden. Tabitha led a warm-up then Josh led us on a run 2.1 km to Kilburn Grange Park to meet Ajay from Kinsgate Community Centre who filled us in on what to do and provided tools and gloves. Josh, Pete, Meg and Amir got to work with forks digging and turning soil in the open triangular bed while Tabitha and Karen weeded the rose garden, pulling out the bindweed. The diggers really dug it doing a forking good job all around the perimeter of the bed while Karen and Tabitha were knot in a bind, pulling out an enormous pile of bindweed. It was a good turn out and it turned out good. Then Amir and Tabitha dug up and re-planted the apple tree in the kids playground. A good job all round. Josh then led us on a run back to B&B where Karen led a cool-down, then we piled into B&B for refreshments 😁 🍻and a chat. Full run 4.2km and a good job for Kingsgate Community centre. See you next time ⏲️

Goodgym Brent met at Willesden, and welcomed first timer Meg to the group. We warmed up then ran 2.5km to Kingsgate to help sort out two roadside community planters.

We were equipped with gloves and gardening tools with which we trimmed the nettles, cut overhanging branches, and removed the weeds.

Josh handled the unwieldy loppers in a skilful pruning of the branches, and Tania, Karen, Tabitha, Pete, Beatriz, Meg and Samina also used their gardening skills to assist Ajay with plucking weeds, pulling out the stinging nettles and piling up the branches for collection.

There was a joyful interchange of gardening related encouragements amongst us, and we did a great job of clearing all the weeds. Some local residents stopped to thank us for the difference we were making .

We posed for a group photo then we ran back to the pub for some drinks and discussion of the summer social

Great job everyone!

On the longest and sunniest Monday of the year , Goodgym Brent ran 2.5km to meet Ajay from Kingsgate Garden Club.

We ran to some community planters that were overgrown and needed some loving care and attention. Tabitha and Samina made a good start pulling out the weeds, setting branches aside for collection, and throwing away the litter . Josh got to work with a large lopper. He trimmed the overhanging branches , cutting down high branches , to ensure that cars and pedestrians had a clear view of the road. It made the junction a lot safer for all .

Tania and Beatriz removed huge amounts of ivy that was suffocating a tree, as well as removing more weeds that were over taking the beds.

Now the beds are clear, new plants will be added to brighten up the local area , as soon as plans are approved .

We cleared up, posed for a photo and made our way back. Excellent job everyone !

"I heard the residents of the Kingsgate Estate were planning a litter pick on their flower bed planters. I guess you could say they're really digging deep to clean up their act!" or 'Five on a secret trail '.

Lizzie, Becka, Pete, Josh and Lee met up outside Willesden Green tube station on a drizzly monday evening, did a warm- up then jogged 2 km to the Kingsgate Estate off Kilburn High Road, with Pete leading and Becka backmarking. There they met up with Diana and Ajay from the Kingsgate Community Centre (and from One Kilburn community groups). Ajay provided litter pickers, gloves and refuse sack holders and Pete provided some refuse sacks then we proceeded to go to various raised planter beds around the estate and do litter picking on them to make them clean for the local residents on the estate. Quite a lot of refuse was collected including recycled waste, all manner of things were encountered including general waste paper, bottle tops, cans, plastic, someone's valuable house keys and even a large pressurised canister. Ajay is a major part of One Kilburn an online shared space that has been created alongside local community groups in Kilburn. It brings together different projects, ideas and activities of the past, present and future in one online space to share learnings and support conversations on how together local residents and the council can turn their ideas into action. You can learn more about them here https://onekilburn.commonplace.is/ It is a starter project and if successful might expand across the country. Having cleared 8 or 9 planters we then took direction from Diana regarding our refuse sacks, handed back litter pickers etc to Ajay, had a group photo, wished them well then jogged up to Brondes Age, a nice sports bar in Kilburn for a quick drink to celebrate Lee's 50th completed task and Becka's recent birthday - many congratulations Lee and many happy returns Becka.

Well done team for a constructive and fulfilling evening!

BOOM! Christmas has hit GG Brent and thirteen wonderful people joined me to run over 7km to help put up Christmas decorations for Kingsgate Community Centre!

We were joined tonight by Sasha who was on her first ever GoodGym run and we all welcomed her as part of the intro. In the news this week: Christmas party season is upon us with the GoodGym wide party on Friday and the Brent dinner after the run on the 16th.

Once we were all warmed up and everyone ready to go we set off for Kingsgate. It was a fairly uneventful run but we did have to contend with slippy leaves and a short blast down the High Road (too busy!).

Once at the centre we were shown what needed to be done - two main tasks: decorate the tree and put up lights across the ceiling of the main hall. We split in to teams and got to work. It was soon clear that there were a few too many of us to be working well in the small space and with only two tasks... so to the hills!

Look at us - for the second week in a row we had hill reps at GG Brent! I took a small team off to do some hill reps with James suggesting the roads with the better hills. Three reps working our way up the hill thinking about the right technique and remembering our arms, legs and posture. With that done we headed back to centre to swap over. For the second hill session we did a hill run rather than reps and wound our way through the streets heading up three hills to match the hill reppers!

And with that done, the centre beautifully decorated and many group photos done it was time to head back. We went a slightly different way to avoid the high road on the way back and before we knew it with everyone putting maximum effort in despite the freezing temperatures we were back at base! There we stretched and then headed inside for a deserved beverage!

Great work everyone - next week it's a short run to Cricklewood Baptist Church for (hopefully) some more indoor tasking. Sign up here!

Cheers,
Pritesh