No shortage of pun ideas tonight - Back to Black (Horse), Paint it Black, Black Magic Women (plus Jim), Black is Black I want my paintbrush back.... but I will stick with the above.

In news we heard of good efforts at the Solstice run on Friday, apparently Lindsay hadnt got a fast enough shutter speed to capture my flying finish, and a few doing the Prestwold League event in muggy conditions.

In terms of timings - if Carlsberg did Goodgym Group Runs... everyone arrived by 6, the runners arived at task 1 minute after the walkers, we complete the task bang on 7pm and arrived back to base at 7.29!!!

The task was meant to be sorting clothes at Scope, one of our favourite regulars, but alas Scope couldnt cope so Huw had to hope that the outstanding task from last weeks cricket washout could become plan B. Thankfully, the weather gods, sort of played ball. After an horrendous rainy day it just stopped enough for us to do the job.

The pre task run took us along the grand union canal to opposite the mighty KP then looping into the nearby estate, Dave and Vicky led the front with Jim back marking. Lindsay who is still frustrated by injury and Nicola who is expecting her second child in November sensibly walked to the task beating the runners there by 1 minute as previously mentioned.

The man at the Electricity Sports Cricket Club was all ready for us. Some new paint and brushes had been purchasesd and Jim set about repairing one of the sets of step ladders so we had 3 serviceable sets to tackle the job of painting the various panels around the back of the building.

As before it was my privilege to watch Sharons painting skills - she went to college for it dont you know? - and it certainly shows. That said, everyone was taking pride in their work, Lindsay and Vicky were keen to seek out some sand paper as they refused to paint a flaky surface "we want to do a proper job" Vicky said and Jen and Michaela having run out of things to paint decided to make some of the previous work look even better by applying a second coat.

Perfect timing, all complete by 7pm and we handed all the materials back to "the man" (sorry Huw, I forget his name about 30 seconds after you told me #uselesswithnames)

Lindsay and Nic set off for the Black Horse while I took the runners for a job back and an impromptu fitness session. It was going to be a pyramid sprint session, then I thought we might do a snake round Bede park but then I spotted a hill! Perhaps the only one within a mile of our base. Only a little one but enough to get the heart racing and to enable a bit of up and down technique practice.

As we headed back Jim had a chat with a lone female runner doing his ambassadorial bit for GG - didnt go un noticed Jim - you have been a brilliant support to GG Leicester thank you.

After a stretch down and a few announcements about next week most of us headed for the black Horse where we toasted Nics 50th good deed and she now will claim the black shirt. It was also Jens 70th group run - another valid excuse for the clink of glasses.

Bonus of the night - as Jen and I stood at the bar ordering our drinks a chap in the back bar shouted across at us - "Are you from that GoodGym where you go for a run then do some good work in the community?" - "Yes" we replied. "What a cool idea that is.. let me get your drinks"..... what a jolly nice man. Apparently he had just read an article about GG in the Times and had obviously been moved by the concept.... nice to be appreciated.

Well done everyone - Watermead Challenge next week.

Nine runners ran 5km to do some painting at the Electricity Sports cricket ground

We don't like cricket, oh no, we love it! Since cricket badger Huw took the reins at GoodGym Leicester it was only a matter of time before he got some cricket involved with our weekly group run. Tonight we visited local club Electricity Sports CC for the first time to help with some painting on their famous old pavilion building. Huw took the runners on a 3km trip along the river to loop round the long way to the task while Dave, Mel and Lindsay took the more direct route to meet us there.

Between 1901 and 1939 the Aylestone Road ground was home to Leicestershire CCC, hosting 399 first class games including matches against touring international sides of Australia, South Africa, India, West Indies and New Zealand. Legendary players such as WG Grace, Sir Don Bradman and Jack Hobbs are among those to have played cricket there as did the less legendary cricketer and GoodGym trainer Huw in the early 90s as a young whippersnapper who soon learned not to bother trying to be a fast bowler after being whacked onto the roof of the nearby building that then was a Staples store on Raw Dykes Road. Pictures of WG Grace and Bradman's touring Australians at the ground are included in the report.

Today the ground is home to Electricity Sports CC (they still retain the name from the time when the electricity board owned the ground) who are a volunteer run community club offering cricket to children from the age of 5 and upwards as well as four Saturday senior teams and a women's team. Find out more about the club here. While the 'Lecky' senior squads took part in their net practice on the ground the GoodGym team set to work painting a variety of wood and metal panels on the back of the pavilion. Lisette used her artistic skills to leave our GG Leicester mark and we worked in pairs to cover as many panels as we could in our time slot. Hopefully we can return soon to finish off the pavilion work and paint one of their sight screens.

The club kindly allowed us to use their outfield for our fitness task so a cricket based fast bowler's fitness drill seemed most appropriate. On average a fast bowler has a 24 second recovery after bowling each ball before they have to run in and bowl again so we did reps of 30m sprints starting every 30 seconds with whatever time you had left in the 30 seconds after the sprint to use as the recovery time. Everyone put in a fantastic effort for the session, hopefully it was an enjoyable and relevant drill for our location.

It was interesting to note when we took our post-task picture that when I asked for a 'cricket pose' that Stu, Lisette, Sheila, Jimmy, Mel and Lindsay all opted to bat, with Sharon bowling and Dave providing an umpire's signal of four runs the only deviations!

Our work complete we took the direct route back to base before stretching off and heading our separate ways.

Watch out for news this week on Facebook and on the weekly email of a potential community mission to Coalville and remember the upcoming races we are supporting the Rothley 10k and Watermead Challenge are both listed on the website. Next week we're going to help LOROS delivering their event booklets.

Happy running, HD