Running London: The Ultimately Distracting Sight-Seeing Route

If you must exercise, the Thames is a good place to run - after tourist hours. Photo: Heather Christie

Oh hey, sportsfans!

Are you sick of dishing out bowls of tenners just to use a sub-par gym, dance cave, or yoga studio? Or maybe you look down at your once-trim physique and notice that you’ve grown a flabby, rubber innertube around your hips thanks to a new-found diet of ale and pie.  Perhaps, though, you’d just love a good trot out-and-about this fab city.

If any of these scenarios describe your present frame of mind, then have I EVER got great news for you!

The answer to all of your problems, friends, is running. And London is a most excellent town in which to go for a wee jog.

The first of these Run London installments talks about the MOTHER OF ALL RUNS: the Central London Thames Run.  The beauty of this one is that it can be as short or long as you’d like it to be, thanks to all those handy bridges that–um–bridge the *mighty Thames.  Further, because the track is essentially circular, you can hop on and hop off wherever you’d like on the loop. BONUS!  To make matters easier, though, we’ll use one hypothetical loop.

The Mother of all Runs

Head down to the Thames.  My particular route gets me to Somerset House, just by the Victoria Embankment.  From there, there are some beautifully wide sidewalks beside the river, which allow for some dazzling vistas.  Continue on to Westminster (about 10 minutes from Embankment).  At Westminster, you can either cross the bridge south OR! if you nip behind the parliament buildings, and run past Westminster Abbey down St. Margaret Street (which becomes Abingdon, which becomes Millbank), you can instead cross over Lambeth Bridge.  This brings you to the south bank (hurrah!) From here, you can run past St. Thomas’ Hospital, the London Eye, that lovely–but random–carousel, the OXO Tower, Jubilee Gardens and the South Bank Centre all the way to Blackfriars’ Bridge, where (at press time) they are undergoing refurbishments and you must follow a diversion/detour.

Once you take the well-signed detour, you’ll end up in front of the Tate Modern, in the middle of its birch tree garden.  You can continue on to Tower Bridge, crossing, and running west past the Tower of London, along the Thames path until you get back to Lancaster Place Bridge, where you (hypothetically) began.

Bonuses, Tricks, Tips

The beauty is that you can cross and turn back at any of the 10 bridges along the way, which makes for quite a flexible little route!  Not to mention the fact that you get to see all sorts of priceless London attractions–absolutely free!  That said, there are a few things you need to look out for…

1) Tourists: tourists are the Rosie O’Donnell to a runner’s Donald Trump.  Because this run hits up all the typical tourist hang-outs, you need to run it on off-peak hours such as early morning and late at night.  Unless you fancy playing chicken with a visitor’s Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

2) Preparation:  It’s easy to jump on this run,  lose complete track of time and then realise that you’re totally knackered, 10km from home, and have a Tina Turner of a foot cramp.  Make sure you hydrate and fuel up properly before embarking on this not-for-the-faint-of-heart journey.