LIKE A VIRGYM, RUNNING FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME

...This week's pun has been brought to you by Nish, welcoming Chris to his first run with GG Newham. And our report has been boldly taken on by Andreana.

Seven hardy GoodGymmers sacrificed their skins for the sake of community courgettes this week, running to Play, Sow & Grow for a spot of weeding. Sounds nice & gentle, right?

A short run out and we met the lovely Candy who explained our task: tidy up the garden overgrowth, de-weed all the vegetable beds, and plant pumpkin & courgette saplings in place of the weeds. After a quick debrief on safe strimmer use, we faced the weeds. Far from gentle, these were no weedy weeds. These were Lethal weeds! Faced with head-high stingy nettles, many of us began to wish we had worn full length leggings instead of 3 1/4 lengths. Even the usually bare hand gardeners among us gloved up for this task.

Blood-sucking horse fly

As we dug in, things got even rougher as a myriad of insects, all angry at being disturbed, came out to play. Mosquitoes, some kind of blood-sucking horse fly, and "Flying biting ants" were the few we could identify, but whatever the scientific names for these things are, they were biting us. Relentlessly. The more we weeded, the more they bit. Undeterred, we pressed on with our task until the giant jaggy nettles stood tall no more and the pumpkins & courgettes were planted and watered. This was all carried out under the watchful red eyes of the Play, Sow & Grow chickens, whom appear to recognise our red t-shirts by now. Chickens, unlike GoodGymmers, seem to have a natural immunity to midge bites and nettle stings.

'Superman-style'

Afterwards, stung & bitten but not beaten, we headed back to the Olympic Park for some core strength work. We found some parallel steps & stairs, split into two teams of four and carried out a 'jump-plank-jump' race all the way up the steps followed by a brisk jog back down the stairs. After that we moved on to plank variations; hold the plank for 30seconds, plank plus leg raises for 30seconds, plank plus 'Superman-style' arm raises for 30seconds, and finally, the rotating side plank for 30seconds.

After a good stretch out we went our separate ways. All off home for a good scratch and a bite-cooling bath, no doubt. Pass the savlon.