A beautiful autumnal evening and Colchester Trainer, Angela, visited to lead the run whilst Ian "Ironman" Duggan enjoyed his post-race gin!

We had a lovely run to Brickmakers wood to help Rob with his task of creating firewood. There was a huge pile of London Plane branches that needed to be cut up or sawed up to create firewood. The seeds from the tree are also used for kindling for fires, so its a wonderful way of using the waste from the woodlands that are cleared by this charity.

Everyone got stuck in, and in no time the wood was cleared. What took us a little under 30 minutes would have taken Rob a whole day, so we all felt super proud. We took some photos, then said some goodbyes before making our way back to the Quays for our fitness session.

A quick circuit made sure we were thoroughly exercised before we sauntered back home, basking in the glory of a job well done.

A wet and miserable Bank Holiday Monday couldn't deter 13 Ipswich Goodgymers, including Jo on her first visit, from assembling ready to #dogoodgetfit.

Our task tonight was arrange with RiverCare and involved litter picking along waterfront directly in front of our meeting point at The University of Suffolk. The aim being to keep the river side clear from litter and waste to avoid it going into the water.

As the the task was so close and the rain was.....raining we decide to carry out the task straight away and follow on with our run afterwards.

Armed with litter pickers (that double up as pretend guns or guitars!) We split into two groups and started at opposite ends of the area we wanted to cover this evening, the aim being to meet in the middle in about 30 minutes.

We were surprised to see just how much litter and particularly cans, plastic packaging and cigarette butts there were discarded around the area.. Unfortunately the persistent rain made it difficult to pick up smaller items and lots of very soggy plastic.

Between us we collected around 10 bags of waste - a small, but none the less significant, impact on the area.

Once we had returned to base to store the litterpickers and gloves we headed off to the nearby Alexandra Park, only to find the gates locked - probably because of impending darkness - it didn't matter too much as everyone really loved the up hill run to get there!

Plan B was quickly thought up and we made tracks back to the waterfront and used the quayside for a continuous interval session of effort and recovery followed by some core and balance drills before stretching ..... and still the rain came down.

Happy Easter from Goodgym Ipswich

With the recent snow now melted away, it was a positively tropical 5 degrees as Ipswich Goodgymers gathered tonight.

Most of the chatter revolved around who had been successful in securing an entry to the Woodbridge 10k race which opened for entries at midday on Saturday and had sold out of places by 12.36

Stories of the website freezing at the vital moment unable to cope with the huge demand were common but Tom's tale of almost entering 4 times takes some beating! It sounds like there will be a big Goodgym presence on the startline in May.

Before we set off for the short run to Survivors in Transition (SiT) centre, we welcomed Genni to her first Group Run.

On arrival at the SiT centre we were asked to help give the centre a spring clean. Pretty soon the hum of vacuum cleaners co could be heard all around the building along with elbow grease and the squeaking of windows being polished.

The SiT centre is a large building with numerous rooms but it didn't take long for our gang to work their way through the house.

On the run back to base (we actually ran right past the base and on to complete a large loop) by special request from Irene, we stopped off for some Circuit "Fun" - 2 rounds of planks, squat jumps, star jumps and high knee 1-2-3 interspersed with shuttle runs - everyone agreed it was such fun!

And when we finally returned to base (for the second time) another successful Goodgym night was brought to a close with some stretching.

Great work by everyone again tonight. Next week we'll have a longer run as we head for Castle Hill Community Centre to carry out the task we had to cancel due to last week's adverse weather conditions.

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