Goodgym Ipswich went running into 2019 on a cool but pleasant evening for our first Group Run of the year.

We had a chat about the Goodgym January Challenge, the 100 task + 2500km running targets for Goodgym Ipswich and don't forget to link your Goodgym profiles to Strava - lets do this!

It seems lots of people are doing the RED (Run Every Day) campaign to raise awareness of mental health issues and it's great to see Goodgym runs being part of that. Tonight's out & back run was around 5 miles in total and some would complete more with added intervals on the way back. Thank you to Sally, Nicola and Daniela for back marking.

Our task was at one of our regular venues - Castle Hill Community Centre, where we had expected to be ripping up old carpet tiles and moving furniture but due to a late delivery of new carpet tiles the task was changed to painting in the entrance hall and landing areas.

We had the paint lots of rollers, brushes and ladders and splitting into three smaller groups, each taking a different section the progress was astonishing. The challenge to paint as much of one very high wall as possible was met with ladders and long arms being deployed!

Within 30 minutes we were done and headed off for our return run being fartlek based - taking a variety of side roads off our main route and land marks to add some quicker intervals, then rejoining the main group.

Arriving back at the Waterfront we had a short stretch before hometime!

Don't forget we have an additional Group Run and "Starter" session task on Saturday meeting at the Waterfront Building at 10.30am - Everyone is welcome - Bring a friend and spread the word! We even have a "Walk Leader" volunteer for this one (Thank you Andrew!) so if you know people who are apprehensive about running or would prefer to walk to the task, invite them along!

Some of us will be taking in Ipswich parkrun - which is based in Christchurch park for the winter months - beforehand. It would be great to see lots of you there and it's fairly close for a gentle run down to the Waterfront to join the task - it all contributes to the January Challenge figures!