A huge welcome to Sophie and Luke who made their Goodgym debut this evening.......just catching us as we set out for the first leg of our run. We hope you enjoyed your first taste if Goodgym.

Our task was to meet the fabulous Ipswich Soup Kitchen volunteers and help them with their nightly outreach programme distributing food and drinks to the homeless and needy within the town.

However our rendezvous time was 7.20pm giving us time to take on a 3 mile Goodgym Tour de Parks (I stole the title from Strava - Thanks for that Lizzie!) A route of around 3 miles taking in 3 of Ipswich's fine parks - Holywells, Alexandra and Christchurch.

In each park I had planned a little challenge.......so on arrival in Holywells park we had 2 sets of long incline efforts with decline recoveries, before heading to Alexandra Park where the challenge was some relay sprint intervals..what fun! We then made tracks towards Christchurch Park where, as everyone knows, there are some steep hills! Unfortunately (or perhaps not!) we were running out of time so only managed a quick loop of the lower end of the park before heading to the task meeting point.

We met up with Jazmin, the volunteer group co-ordinator helped set up a few tables before joining the very efficent system of handing out a variety of food and drinks, some of which we had brought with us to contribute . We also spent time chatting to some of those who use the soup kitchen and the regular volunteers. Quite a humbling experience and felt like one of our more worthwhile tasks even though it didn't involve very much "work".

Thank you to Jazmin and the rest of her Ipswich Soup Kitchen volunteers for inviting us along. I'm sure we will return soon.

Prior to setting off tonight there were congratulations to Robin, who was present in spite of/despite having run the Bungay Marathon yesterday and to Kerry who scored a PB at the Bromley 10k on Sunday too

It was a beautiful sunny but chilly evening and we had a really scenic run taking us along the Waterfront, through Holywells to Landseer Park, which was the destination for tonight's task - a litter pick in the woods around the park.

For many us Landseer Park was a revelation - a bit of a hidden Ipswich gem. A huge expanse of grassland bordered by woods with a number of trail paths..

Do you remember when Snickers bars were called Marathon?

We walked the paths picking up any litter and came across treasures such as a huge training shoe, nappies, carpets, loads of bottles and a bicycle tyre, but the discovery of the night was made by Lucy - an original Marathon Bar wrapper - how apt - Not sure Lucy's old enough to remember them for real!

With several bags of rubbish collected we headed back out if the woods for an ascent of Cliff Lane (very steep hill) before turning back into Holywells Park and a short hill interval session, before exiting at the top f the park and enjoying the relaxed downhill pace back to base.

Don't forget our first Community Mission takes place this Friday morning - you can find all the info and sign up HERE

This evening we started by celebrating the marathon achievements of two regular Goodgymers. Nicola at her first session since completing the Manchester Marathon with a PB time; and Robin who ran, and just about survived the heat of the London Marathon yesterday and was still up for tonight's run too!

Our run tonight took us to the scene of our very first Goodgym Ipswich task - Activ Lives Peoples Community Garden. On arrival we were met by Danny who guided us through the vast expanse of gardens & allotments towards the top end of the gardens where our job was waiting.

Danny explained a bit about the work Activ Lives do and gave instructions on what was required tonight. Two jobs needed doing - to dig a hole in preparation for school children to construct the ideal stag beetle retreat, later this week. We learned from Danny that stag beetles spend most of their life underground as larvae only emerging for a few weeks to find a mate and reproduce. They love to be under soil in among rotting wood which the children would build around and in the hole in a few days time.

The second job was to clear a path around the bee keeping area of overgrown weeds and cover with fresh bark chippings - it was a long circular path and looked like a big challenge for us to complete.

Tom and Andrew took on the digging task while the rest of the team headed for the path. With exemplary team work we had a group moving through clearing weeds from both sides, and a "chipping" team moving along behind them refreshing the path with new bark.

Amazingly the whole path was completed with fresh bark chippings and looked fantastic. This despite Steve working so hard he managed to break his fork in half. We're not sure if Steve was too strong for the fork or he has Uri Geller super powers!

As the path was receiving the final barrow load of bark chips we looked across to see Andrew and Tom disappearing into the hole they were digging for the stags - literally only head and shoulders visible! All this within half hour.

It was quite a long walk to the exit back onto the road where we bid farewell to Danny... until next week when we visit another Activ Lives project. https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/helping-out-in-chantry-park-walled-garden

On the journey back we added a few lamp post intervals to spice up the run, with everyone gathering back at the Waterfront for a stretch before heading home.

A really enjoyable task for fabulous charity done :)