Huge congratulations to Adeline on completing her 50th good deed on tonight's group run

Our "Mammoth" task was in support of St Elizabeth Hospice and we were to run to as many of the Elephant sculptures onElmers Big Parade as possible, giving them a wash and polish where needed.

The trail has been set up for the summer with around 55 differently painted elephants dotted around Ipswich to form the Elmers Big Parade - named after the patchwork elephant in childrens books.

It was a great task, taking us around a large part of the Waterfront and town centre. (Thanks to Kerry for plotting the route) It was bright sunny evening and we saw families and several groups of cubs, brownies and guides following the trail. One group even called us "Legends" when they realised we were cleaning the elephants - we modestly accepted the complement!

In between we had some short burst of step ups, press ups and step running just to keep the excitement going!.

So we travelled almost 6k in total and checked on about 30 of the elephants some need very little attention and one or two required a good rub down with the soapy water and cloths we were carrying. Time wouldn't permit us to get to them all but we wil be repeating this task 2 or 3 more times before the trail finishes and the sculptures are auctioned to raise funds for the Hospice.

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