Burdock of Proof

Tonight's group run in Elthorne Park was optimistically promoted as "not only burdock". 8 Goodgymers arrived at the tool container to learn of their evening challenge. The first was making sense of the aerial map they'd been provided with yellow and red areas. These identified 2 areas for tasks with a choice of either:

• Digging out burdock; or
• Removing last year's plants

With most of the group - understandably - hating burdock after previous tasks, they chose the more vague task to clear up the dead plants instead. Only Sevan and Madhan were brave or foolish enough to go burdock bashing. Before the burdock group set off, Kash asked if anyone knew what burdock looked like. Sevan confidently raised his hand, having been here a few times before.

As the burdock team headed down the Red Path on their task map, Team Dead Plant tried to find the old plants without any luck. Meanwhile Sevan and Madhan were doing some sleuthing of the own and playing "spot the burdock" without much success. Eventually they whipped out their phones and called the great book of knowledge in the sky, which confirmed that one of the plants they saw was a variety of burdock. Greater Common Burdock to be exact. Once they'd figured this, Madhan and Sevan got their spades out and started filling their tonne bags with the stuff.

Soon, Kash and Nishy defected to Team Burdock, bringing their shovels with them. Kash was surprised to find out about this new kind of burdock too, so Madhan had to assure her that Google knew better than them. Kash took one of the dead stalks back to Team Dead Plant where they had the same discussion. "That's not burdock!", "no really, it is".

Once Team Dead Plant were convinced about the burdock, Claire, Emily, Mike and Chris saw that they were surrounded by the stuff and it was more easily accessible than where Team Burdock were working. The two teams combined forces, grabbed some more shovels and filled 2 tonne bags by the end of the task.