May 29, 2008

Brave new world

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redbucket

Inspired by Cathy’s London jog blog with previous talk of running commutes, I packed my trainers yesterday with a view to running home. The route: London Wall to West Hampstead. After being described as “brave” (ahem) by new colleagues, I headed off onto the drissly London pavements.

I can see why people rave about running in London. There are so many sights worth checking out and it’s a great opportunity to see how places you’d visited via the Tube ‘join up’. My route took me up to Old Street, up Farringdon Road (past the Guardian’s HQ), towards Euston (past the British Library), through Regent’s Park (past London Zoo), up Primrose Hill, passing a climbing wall at Swiss Cottage, and then dropping into West Hampstead. I wouldn’t repeat the Euston Road bit as that was smelly and noisy, but the rest was ok.

My previous entry about my potential commute, however, prompted a less than enthusiastic response on Jogblog:

You have to dodge slow people walking and talking on their mobiles; you have to dodge slow people looking at maps; you have to dodge slow people stopping to light cigarettes and you have to dodge people who are just slow. The only good thing about this is that they are so wrapped up in their own little slow world that they don’t hear you when you swear at them under your breath.

Yep, there were plenty of slow folk around, and I do have to agree in her view that the smells of food were tempting and I think I’ll be a great victim of ‘lagar envy’ in the summer. But it’s worth it if, like me, you sit at a desk all day and go to Pod, Pret, Eat et al. every day for lunch.

All said, the run was around 9 miles, completed in a respectable 90 minutes. OK, not a speed record, but I had to consult the A-Z at various points. My foot was painful at points (fields beat pavements hands down), but the rain soon stopped and there were plenty of other runners and cyclists about. Will try and repeat the exercise next week (c’mon Cathy, you know you want to )…