At last a Monday evening with sunshine! What a treat to start and finish tonight's group run in daylight

We had a 2.5 mile run to get to the Castle Hill Community Centre. We have visited the centre several times during the winter to carry out painting tasks but this was our first outdoor task there.

We were met in the car park by Garath and directed to a massively overgrown corner full of bushes (which had morphed into a small forest of trees with huge trunks) and ivy everywhere. They needed the area cleared as the overgrowing bushes, were damaging an external wall and to re-landscape the area.

With limited tools available - 2 saws, 1 pair of loppers and a broom - this was going to be tough task. However everyone got stuck in immediately and within minutes a small skip was full to the brim with Clive jumping on the top to flatten it down.

Some real headway was made with some incisive sawing taking out huge swathes of bushes, branches and mangled roots. Tom managed to get swallowed by some of the bushes as he tried to lever out a particularly stubborn trunk / root.

The skip was now rammed and a growing pile of swan branches and chopped weeds and ivy was amassing on the ground.

Eventually we had to call a halt as time ran out but we'd made a massive impact in clearing most of the area.

The return leg of the run incorporated some train sprints and Steve led us home via his shortcut from last week.

This report can't end without reference to Kerry's story of arriving at Goodgym this evening - he ran from home down to the waterfront

While waiting the inevitable hour or two for the lights to change I thought to myself “that’s strange: I can’t see any runners in the building”. Maybe I was later than I thought, and everyone had already set off? No, looking at my watch I could see it was only 29 minutes past …… five. I’d fallen short in my little hand reading skills, and set off an hour early. Nothing for it to loop back home, sit down for half an hour, then run all the way back down again.

Brilliantly funny but also top dedication to run home and back again to meet us an hour later.

A big welcome to Jason and Will who joined us tonight for their first Goodgym Ipswich Group Run.

It was another rainy Monday evening - we've had a few those recently!

Congratulations were handed to those who had successful weekends with a whole host of events including the Manchester Marathon and Bromley 10k, but pride of place goes to Sue and Andrew who carried out the first Goodgym Ipswich mission on Saturday - you can read all about it here

Undeterred by the falling rain we set off for a 2.5 mile run across town to Highfield Nursery. This was our second visit to the nursery with the task of painting a room that hosts 2-4 year olds on a regular day.

Andrew and Carl met us and were well prepared with dust sheets, brushes, rollers and paint all laid out ready to go. And immediately everyone set to work. Almost naturally the group divides into "rollers" & "brushes" with "brushes" cutting in and taking on the intricate areas while the "rollers" cover the large expanses quickly and efficiently - there was some fabulous team work and the whole room was completed in around 30 minutes - Robin even had time for a short break in one of the children's chairs.

With the job complete we headed back on the return leg of the run completing just over 5 miles in total - with a longer run the additional fitness had to be saved for another day.

The return run was even wetter than the outward leg but there were no complaints as we splashed and chatted the whole way back.

Next week's run is a similar distance to the neighbouring Castle Hill Community Centre - more details and sign up HERE - it may even be dry!!