Foodbank donations given by fitness challenge

The owner of a Thetford fitness suite has hosted a fitness competition in aid of the town’s foodbank.

Richard Taylor hosted a nine-hour ‘calorie accumulator’ at the Charles Burrell Centre, in Staniforth Road, on December 12.

The challenge saw six teams of six from different fitness organisations take on their own 50 minutes in the suite to complete as many repetitions of slamballs, burpees, squats and push ups as well as burn as many calories as they could on an assault bike, which is like an extreme seated cross trainer, and a SkiErg, which simulates the movements of skiing.

Richard said: “I planned this over Lockdown 2.0 to give them something to train for and, as it gained momentum, I believed we could also raise some food for the foodbank.

“So the ‘Buy-In’ was Christmas food and I could not believe the generosity of these good people taking part who just kept walking up to me with bags full of goodies.”

The overall winners of the event were the team from Revolution Fitness, in Bury St Edmunds, and with each team’s donations Thetford Foodbank saw donations of food which included around 30 boxes of mince pies, a troop of chocolate Santas as well as biscuits, sweets and tinned food.

Richard said: “This is something I’d love to do again, I can’t thank the people and their coaches enough as well as my partner Katrina for giving up her time to be our official adjudicator, it’s really warming and overwhelming to see communities come together for the good of charity.”