That fitness session yesterday wasn't on the menu when I left Archway, cycling south east to see my favourite mid-week folk. I got a call from Ross at the Canal & River Trust to say "someone's already come and cleaned up the whole canal section". Put your litter down for a second, turnaround and someone's taken it, typical. We should see the pros to this, the canal is clean, people are chipping in all over London to make a difference and we got a tough, pure workout in. Not before our Random Weekly Question...

"What peculiar food combination do you enjoy?" This one started slowly, but certainly picked up some momentum. Pies and hummous, butter and flour(!), marmite and cucumber sandwich, hummous and cheese, chilli oil on everything, bovril on everything, apple and peanut butter, banana and peanut butter, black pudding poached egg salad, raisin chocolate mouth blending mixer and dipping bourbons in apple juice. My favourite was the lengths Hilary went to deter her weasly uni-mates from pinching her food - "I only ate oatabix, soya milk and tomato juice". This is someone I'd go into to the trenches with. Committed. Oddest combination goes to Phoebe's flour and butter indulgence. One thing we can all take away from this - we are weird.

A session of short hill sprints, core strength and kilometer reps was the improvised fitness blast. The idea was to fine tune your biomechanics and technique on the hills. Test and fatigue your core musculature on the circuit. Then ask for 1-2 sustained effort 'kilometers' to finish. We can confidently say we're all a bit fitter after that. Good work especially to first timer James, he took the session in his stride, maybe he can convince Phoebe to come even when the weather conditions fall outside her narrow optimum range?! I live in hope.

Next week I'm trying to sort Hackney Adventure Playground. Sign up here. Then we'll head to Manorfield Primary the week after. Get involved.

Till then

B