Fitness Playground Treasure Hunt

A couple of weeks ago I was invited along to a fitness bloggers social event by the lovely ladies at Lunges and Lycra. They hosted the most fantastic evening and I had a brilliant time getting to know other fitness bloggers that I mainly just know by their Twitter handle. It was kind of odd introducing myself and realising that people were more likely to recognised me as @jbeccx or FromSnickersToMarathon than they were as Becca!

Alongside some lovely food, fizz and general merriment, the main event of the evening was a Treasure Hunt organised by Fitness Playground. The ethos behind Fitness Playground is that London as a city is a gym just waiting to be explored. They transform the city’s famous landmarks into a unique workout including obstacle courses, circuits and wacky races.

They’d put together something a bit different for us fitness bloggers. We were divided into teams, made up with war paint and were soon being sent off into the heart of Soho with our mobile phones and Whatsapp at the ready.

We were sent clues to nearby locations – we had to work out where we were supposed to be going and then run there as quickly as possible. Our team went dashing off towards the first location and were very excited to be the first to arrive.

As well as take part in the activities at each location we were also sent a number of challenges to complete along the way. These included a set of photos to be taken and sent back to base and some items to collect. Each photo and each item would gain us more points. However, in our excitement at reaching the first activity point in the lead, my team *may not* have read their instructions properly and therefore *may not* have realised about the scavenger hunt aspect of the event. Ho hum!

The clues sent us running around Soho and Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Green Park and Piccadilly Circus before heading back to our base at the Soho Hotel. Along the way we met various members of the Fitness Playground team who challenged us to play table tennis and climb Nelson’s Column. Well, the base of it anyway.

We had a blast along the way and fully embraced the photo challenges stopping for pictures with strangers, taking photos of us all with our feet off the ground and in yoga poses.

We were unable to find a policeman which meant we missed out on one of the snaps but the other teams all managed to find the same man, who must have had one of most amusing shifts of his life!

We were the second team home, pipped at the post by the eventual winners of the competition – who had read their instructions properly and done all their scavenging.

It was such a fun event, we ran about 5K in total and I barely noticed because we were laughing and joking all the way around. Such a great idea and really well organised by the Fitness Playground team.

As of this week Fitness Playground are bringing their weekly sessions to Canary Wharf, which is right on my doorstep. They do an intro offer of 2 sessions for £10 which is amazing value for Central London. I’m definitely going to check them out soon.