Bleeping each other hard for Valentine's day

It's Valentine's. You're staring into the eyes of the person who's been with you every step of the way, and you can barely fight the urge to lunge towards them. Your pulse is racing, your palms are sweating, you have a funny feeling in your stomach, your mouth is dry. You ache with every fibre of your body...

Is it love?

No: it's calisthenics drills, followed by a bleep test.

24 runners polished off a 4.6km round-trip to Clapham Common to put the Gym in GoodGym, for a fitness session designed to level the playing field and allow people to push themselves as far as they wanted. Lining up from most to least confident about the promised Bleep Test, runners were split into four groups, with each group given a set of drills to do before the test.

Group one had to complete four rounds of:

• 10 squats

• 10 lunges

• 10 deadlifts

Group two had four rounds of:

• 10 squats side leg lifts

• 10 touchdown lunges

• 20 high knees

Group three:

• 10 jump squats

• 10 jump lunges

• 5 flat out burpees

Group four:

• 10 butt-kicker jump squats

• 10 sit-up burpees

• 20 skier jumps

AND, because Elise was concerned that this was not difficult enough, she also signed up her group, group three, for 20 skier jumps - they thanked her in the appropriate manner.

"It's not hard enough", said Elise

The idea behind the different sets of exercises is to "pre-knacker" (technical term) the body, to simulate having run a long way already - useful, for example, if you're training for a long run, but don't always have the time to run your full distance - get a bit of pre-knackering in, and it'll be like you're running the second half of your race distance whilst you're actually just setting out the door.

Truth be told, everyone was a winner. However, some people were more winners than others, and they're getting a special shout-out.

Firstly to George Clarkson, our bleeping winner, who bleeped himself the hardest in front of all of us, and reached 9.2 on the bleep test before we had to force him to stop, and secondly Tom Hunter, the man who was driving George to be the best he could be, by staying with him up until 9.1.

Thirdly to Judy Reid, who arrived at Papa's Park having just done a training run, saying that she was understandably a bit worn out.

"I'm a bit worn out", said Judy (which was understandable).

Judy went on to nail a level 6 on the bleep test, and also elected to do the longer run to and from the common.

And fourthly and fifththththtly, to newcomers Rose Brissenden and Kerry Van Der Merwe, who, despite not being super-confident about their running, smashed 2.3k from Brixton to Clapham, obliterated the calisthenic high-intensity drills, pounded the bleep test, and destroyed 2.3k back home without stopping, without walking, and with massive smiles all round.

They are heroes and they all deserve our cheers.

It was wonderful also to welcome Lucy, Andy, Gina, Alex and Jen who also performed like total pros in the turfy colosseum that is Clapham Park. Show them some love and make sure they come back.

To finish, here are some of my favourite anagrams of Valentine's Day:

• Anal Sited Envy

• Satan Deny Evil

• Elated Navy Sin

• Nailed Any Vets

Apparently there are 31,671 more though.

John