It's Raining When - Hallelujah - We're Painting Again

On a night when you have a 5 mile run lined up, the last thing you want is the forecast of heavy rain all evening

I was a touch pessimistic as I arrived at the waterfront. It was raining with no sign of a let up and I anticipated a low turnout.

I should have had more faith in the Goodgymmers of Ipswich with 15 of us laughing in the face of the rain gods and venturing out as it was persistently raining down.

We even had an advance party of Sally, Nicola and Ali setting off early with the intention of us catching up en route, however they were already painting by the time we arrived.

A big welcome to Amy who was joining us for the first time tonight. Kudos also to Sue, who missed us at the start due to arriving late at the Waterfront but cycled across town to catch us up on Norwich Road.

I didn't mention it prior to the run tonight because they weren't there at the start but congratulations to Ali on her run at the Haverhill Half Marathon on Sunday and to Sue who complete a personal challenge of running a solo half marathon distance on Friday.

Tonight's task was cancelled due to the snow a couple of weeks ago. We've been lucky through the winter to have had the opportunity to paint a number of rooms at Castle Hill Community Centre and we were returning to paint one of the larger rooms at the centre.

We arrived at Castle Hill dripping wet and already soaked through to base layers - did I mention it was raining quite hard? - but immediately the gang got stuck into painting a huge room with an open plan kitchen. There weren't not quite enough brushes and rollers for everyone, so we asked for some cloths to clean skirting boards, radiators, door frames and tables.

Fabulous teamwork saw the cutters in and rollers following snake like around the room. Within 30 minutes the room was complete, sparkling clean and surprisingly there was still a small amount of paint left!

There was a slight reluctance to don the wet layers for the return leg of the run , though some had managed to seek out working radiators to at least partially dry out jackets.

We splish-splashed our way along the 2.5 miles back to base in the "refreshing" enjoying the games of dodging the falling cats & dogs and wakes created by cars passing through lake-like puddles.

It was certainly a night to remember - challenging conditions to run but an epic task completed - terrific work by all.

Next week's task promises to be a good one. It's a relatively short run to a new task and bring a small back pack you can run with if possible.

See the details and sign up Here