The sun was beginning to set as we made our around Ipswich waterfront and into the park for this week's fitness session.

Delighted to see Miranda and Clara back for more! love the commitment ! And welcome to Christina who ended up setting the pace.

Progress all round as the group were able to maintain a steady pace and take less recovery time on what was a warm and sticky evening. Well done, team!

Look forward to seeing everyone again soon and seeing if we can take the route a little further.

So after a long, long wait Good Friday was finally the day when Ipswich members came together again to run. After a few days of sunshine and short sleeves and with the introductions completed, talk soon turned to the weather - and whether one, two or more layers were needed to protect from the breeze coming off the waterfront marina.

With Ipswich town centre eerily quite on what is usually a busy shopping day we were able to enjoy plenty of space to run together in a covid-secure manner.

Setting off at a nice steady pace the group consisting of Carolyn, Nicola, Miranda, Laura and Kerry, as well as Run Leader, Alan, were soon into their stride, discussing their experiences of running over the last twelve months and across three separate lockdowns. And everyone agreed that the thing that everyone had missed most was the chance to run socially, in groups, where the chat was as important, if not more important, than the pace.

In a blink the 5K run was complete - small but significantly important steps forward as we all move forward towards more running opportunities, more local organisations to help, and more GoodGym friendships to be made.

Prior to heading out into the wind we celebrated the weekend achievements with a number of regulars having done the Tarpley 10 or 20 mile race locally and Colchester Nick completing the Brighton Half Marathon.

It was a very simple task tonight - litter picking a fairly small grassy area right on the edge of the river on behalf of Rivercare. It was dark and the "bat lights" were put to good use seeking out rubbish among the long grass. We managed to fill two large bags with an array of debris.

Once the litter was picked we headed to the floodlit Suffolk College grounds for a challenging pyramid interval session - only 30 secs recovery between each set of effort s ranging from 30 secs to 2mins 30 secs and back down the other side.

Everyone put in a great shift to maintain a good pace throughout particularly those who had 20 miles in their legs from yesterday!

Another fab Goodgym evening and, as Tom pointed out at the end of the night, there was something missing... it wasn't raining for the first time in weeks!!