Urban Running - London

Working in and living close to London means urban running is something I have done for many years. With work colleagues my first tentative return to running since school involved heading out at lunchtime to run along the Embankment and across one of the many bridges and along the southbank before return to the north side and back to work. Further out from the centre I have run parts of the London Marathon route or jogged through Greenwich Park. And even used the Canals of eastern and north London.

When marathon training I have run some of the superb routes identified by the Serpentine Running club including the excellent route 'The Boat Race' or 'Last Half of the London Marathon'. They also have some excellent runs mapped for the Royal Parks or the Regents Canal.

So this morning on the BBC local London News a story caught my attention. The combination of two favourite activities Running and Sightseeing in central London. This involves visitors to the capital joining in with other like minded individuals to explore various areas on foot with a guide to navigate and explain. A little bit of internet research identified that this concept is popular in London and other major cities. There are at least three providers of this in London:

• Urban Running Tours (see sights on the run)
• City Jogging Tours
• London Sightseeing Runs

Of these three organisations that provide this two would appear to be affiliated with an organisation known as Global Running Tours that markets the various organisations that offer this in other major cities including the US New York, Chicago and Washington DC and in Europe for example German Running Tours. And in a city I have visited myself in South America, the truly wonderful Buenos Aires.

So you get the picture, you are new to a city and are eager to explore the city but also you want to maintain your fitness or de-stress after meetings and here is the perfect combination of a tourist opportunity and something so much better than the hotel treadmill and Sky Sports News to while away the time.

However there may be a downside to this and that would be that these tours are not free. Each website presents the prices and routes and my research suggest that they are typically £25 for a 5 to 6 mile route. Now that may compare favourably with other types of tours in London but I have always thought that a combination of Tourist Information or a tour guide book (Lonely Planet etc) and Google Maps would suffice to work out a running route of 5 miles in London. When travelling myself I have always managed to work out where to run. But to give a truly insightful understanding of the history and context of an area or buildings you need a Blue Badge Guide who will have undertaken training and be qualified to provide that information.

Probably this 'running and sightseeing' concept does work for some people and provides a safe and supported opportunity to run and get some local knowledge when in London (or another major city) for a few days. If anyone wants to go for a run for free then I suggest they use some of the resources of local running clubs or running sites including MapMyRun, RunningAHEAD or Fetcheveryone that have a directory of running routes submitted by users.