We had an excellent turnout for a rare Ipswich Community Mission - 11 Goodgymers arriving at the new FIND Food Bank premises to help clear borders of rubble, stones, rubbish and overgrown weeds.

It was great to see so many people contributing to the January task total, including Bethan who was making her Goodgym debut! - hope to see you again soon.

It was quite a demanding task with the car park borders fairly overgrown but also full of stones and a variety of rubblish items. We filled numerous bags of heavy rubble as well as cutting back some wildly overgrown bushes before pulling out grass and weeds and lots of loose leaves. The aim being to clear as much as possible for the borders to covered in top soil and planted with trees.

On a task like this it can be hard to see the progress being made but the piles of bags and branches grew and grew.

Eventually we called it day and enjoyed a warming drink in side the food bank building.

Great work everyone!

Monday's Group Run info and task on behalf of BHF is now available to sign up HERE

We have a January "Starter Session" next Saturday straight after the Ipswich parkrun running to Ranelagh Primary School - see more info and sign up HERE

On a very cold night all the pre run chat was about layers and that some of our Goodgym crew were arriving in shorts!

There was also kudos given to those who had run the Beenfleet 15 mile race or Cross Country league on Sunday as well as celebrating JJ's 250th parkrun on Saturday.

It was great to have Jenny and Nicole join us for their first Monday night Group Run after coming along to the January starter session last week. Jenny also bringing Rachel for her Goodgym debut!

The run to our destination was almost exactly a mile but started with a climb up the notorious Bishops Hill, which everyone loved! The front runners particularly enjoyed the challenge - only realising when they reached the top that they would be turning around to go back down and pick up the bark marker group - what fun!

Arriving at the FIND Foodbank we were met by Maureen who asked our team to get stuck into a variety of cleaning tasks including a floor scrubbing machine. With a large group floors were hoovered, fridges cleaned and surfaces dusted and wiped. Much hilarity ensued when the floor scrubber came into action.

With several of us trying to follow the instructions and only managing to get too much water on the floor, we eventually got the machine going with Kerry in the driving seat. However the machine was driving Kerry rather than the other way round. Eventually control was retained with JJ's assistance - nudging it towards the opposite direction. Steve also had a bash at driving and with the experience of watching Kerry managed a little more control evene managing to get into corners.

The machine - and the pilots - did a great job of cleaning the floor, but did leave the floor quite wet. To avoid dirty trainer footprints all over the floor, the solution became a "dance off" with lots of Goodgymers shuffling around with towels on their feet drying and the floor and leaving it sparkling clean!

With Bishops hill conquered on our run out we took an alternative route back with the steep downhill along Cliff Lane before finishing the evening with a group fartlek session.

A super turnout and great to see everyone on a bitterly cold evening - see you all next week for the final Group Run in January