London running (sightseeing) tour

Posted by Rachel 

Last Sunday morning- a gorgeous 14 miler on the packed sand of the beaches of the California Central Coast as the sun rose and began breaking through the fog.

 picture of my in-law beach vacation the evening before an amazing long run

40 hours later- my own personal running tour of London. I am having an awesome and lucky month! Now, I’ll go through my run in exhaustive detail, just in case anyone cared!

 

The first part of the route was a tour of the Royal Parks. After passing Buckingham Palace, I ran through Green Park. Beautiful, open, and spacious, there were tons of runners and cyclists (where permitted) in this park. (Question to ponder: why do so many British runners wear backpacks?) They also provide lawn chairs for the public- pretty neat.

(1) Buckingham Palace (pic from the day before- there weren't that many tourists out at 7 am), (2) Green Park

Then I went on to Hyde Park and Kensington Park. Hyde Park has a lot of colorful flowers, including a rose garden. This was another gorgeous park to run in. I crossed into Kensington Park and then ran along a body of water which, according to my map, is called the “Serpentine”. It is here that I found the open water swimmers. Hello, triathletes of London! I felt very at home here, and there were tons of people running as well. I’m glad they were swimming here because I had looked at the water in the Thames yesterday and it was not pretty. I also noticed that they have a species of goose here. I think the Canada Geese near Lake Merritt are the bastard cousins of these things. The London ones look cleaner and nicer and actually stay out of the running path. (Random sidenote: yesterday I saw some tourists petting a squirrel. What?! And eww.) Then I crossed over the Serpentine (on a bridge of course, not via the water) and ran back out through Hyde Park. On the way out, I saw the police force which looked just like the officers of the Oakland Police Department (ha!).

(1) Hyde Park, (2) open water swimmers! made my day (3) the Serpentine (running trail of London) (4) LPD

From here I moved onto Piccadilly Circus. I thought from the internet pictures that this would be a British version of Time Square, but it wasn’t really. It looked like it was ok for shopping but that’s not what I was there to do. Surprisingly, of the many roads off-shooting from Piccadilly, I actually chose the right one to run down (a freaking miracle). I moved onto Trafalgar Square, home to The National Gallery and a giant statue of a blue rooster (don’t know). (Ok, I googled it and apparently the statue of a big blue cock is supposed to represent feminism. Still don’t know…) Anyway, it is after Trafalgar Square where if you look at my Garmin map, it starts getting a little crazy. I started off the right way, but took a turn right because that’s really what it looked like on my map. I second guessed myself quickly, and a nice British gentleman informed me I was running away from the river (ie. the total wrong way). So I followed his directions as far south as they took me, then proceeded to go the wrong way AGAIN (although St. James Park, which I took a detour through, was lovely). Finally, I turned around and kept running, eventually spotting Big Ben and Parliament which I knew were on the river. Thank goodness for gigantic landmarks.

(1-2) Piccadilly, (3-4) Trafalgar Square, (5) cool unidentified arch, (6) something else unidentified, (7) lost in St James Park, (8) finally found the river!

At this point in the run, I had accidentally added almost a mile with my “detours”. I was pushing mile 7, and the fact that I had only eaten 1 snack (fruit on the plane) and 1 meal (dinner) the day before was becoming very evident. So I took a detour off of the Thames River and found a shitty coffee shop that was next to a bunch of businesses. Everyone in this shop was dressed for work, and the guy behind the counter was giving me an eye. (Yes, I was the only sweaty person in there. But I’ve been in much, MUCH nicer coffee shops way more sweaty). I purchased water and a Snickers hoping it would hold me for at least 3 more miles.

So onward I go, passing a really neat pedestrian bridge. The river trail was SO confusing. It kept taking tiny detours from the river, many of them seeming to go through buildings (or at least through areas that were enclosed on most sides). I would’ve certainly got lost if it weren’t for the runner a few steps ahead of me who was luckily going a similar pace. I was probably annoying the crap out of him running his same pace just a few strides behind him, but he did me a huge favor. I don’t know how anyone could possibly do a tempo run in this area because of course, my Garmin was going nuts. A ways down, I got to London Bridge. Given that I had already added mileage and I was on the brink of dehydration, starvation, or both, I decided to cross over to the south side of the river on London Bridge rather than continue onto Tower Bridge. Luckily, I could see Tower Bridge from London Bridge and that was good enough for me. As I climbed the stairs onto the Bridge, I began to wonder about that children’s song “London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…” Luckily, it did not fall down as I was running on it, and as someone who lives in earthquake land London Bridge is probably the least risky of all the bridges I run on.

(1) London Eye, (2) neat pedestrian bridge, (3) London Bridge, (4) Tower Bridge, which sadly I did not reach

After crossing London Bridge, the path heads away from the river again. Looking at the map I thought it would be obvious how to get through this part, but of course in real life it wasn’t. So I decided to walk this part and happened upon an awesome “hidden” market (Borough Market). It seemed to be mostly locals in here for breakfast and the food looked awesome. I saw an excellent looking coffee shop which I can only assume to be the London equivalent of Blue Bottle judging by the line. I would love to return to this market next time I hit up London (and not in the middle of a run).

Borough Market- highly recommended not during a run

I finally found the path again and the next couple of miles were easy to follow (and nearly continuous running minus 2-3 pictures). I passed the London Eye, a couple of museums, and the Aquarium before returning over the Big Ben Bridge (not sure it’s called that). I ran through St James Park AGAIN (the difference here is that this time I was actually supposed to be running this way), through Buckingham Palace (not the actual Palace but the garden/circle surrounding it) and then back to my hotel for a total of 9.7 miles. I originally mapped 11 but given my detours, if I had continued onto Tower Bridge it would’ve been 12-13: no thank you on a Tuesday morning after a looong plane ride.

(1) London Eye, (2) Big Ben + Parliament, (3) St James Park

I would highly recommend this run if you ever visit London because I got to see a TON of stuff. Normally I’m a huge advocate of biking when traveling because you can see more stuff more efficiently than running. However, in this case, there are 2 issues with it: (1) A lot of the parks, etc say ‘no cycling’ and people actually follow these rules (2) Cyclists do bike with cars, although there is often no designated bike lane. Combine trying not to die via double decker bus with every single traffic convention being completely backwards, the bike option seems a little high risk to me.

Thank you, city of London, for the heads up (you don't want to bike here)

After the run, I showered and noticed that the Changing of the Guard Ceremony was taking place soon at Buckingham Palace. Since I paid a hefty fee to stay right near Buckingham, I figured I might as well take advantage of this! The Palace grounds were PACKED and I chose a random place along a fence hoping I’d be able to see something. It turned out that if I hopped up on this fence and balanced just right (read: burning quads) I could actually see quite well! So as if 10 miles wasn’t enough, I got my quad strengthening in for the day, too.

I can only assume that the first dudes were shift one and the other dudes were shift two

And I shall leave you with a few other pics that aren't from the run but represent things about London that I enjoyed. Summary: go to London.

(1) Westminster Abbey, (2) ham hock, (3) some modern buildings of London