IT’S official – growing pumpkins keeps you fit.

Physiotherapy assistant Nicky Mercer won the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre’s annual pumpkin growing competition with this 81lb beast.

Contestants paid £3 to enter and the contest, now in its third year, raised £200 for the Diving Diseases Research Centre in Plymouth.

Mrs Mercer, 50, who lives in Didcot, said: “We all like growing pumpkins and thought it would be a good idea.

“I now have really good muscles around my arms from carrying it around. Growing pumpkins is definitely good physiotherapy.”

Mrs Mercer said she was “amazed and honoured” to have won the contest.

This year, 12 staff from the NOC in Headington, Oxford, competed.

They brought their prized pumpkins into the office for a weigh-in.

Melanie Waine, who also works at the NOC, said: “This is the largest pumpkin we have ever seen. We want to know whether anyone can better that in Oxfordshire.”