Goodgym Islington Area Activator Simon caught up with a smashing crew of London School of Economics students for another summer group run across London. We had 8 runners tonight (including Ishan, who signed up 7 minutes before and arrived in blue jeans- good effort mate!) and plenty of first time participants (welcome!).

We began our session in Lincoln's Inn Fields, with a dynamic warm up to get the blood pumping and to raise the heart rate. For a pre-run workout, Simon introduced a fun interval session called "Clover Loops"- a fartlek (speed play) session. Lincoln's Inn Fields is separated as a quadrant- with a bandstand in the middle. Each of our runners would run across the park (through the bandstand) at a hard (tempo/threshold) effort, and then jog around the perimeter of the park to the left as a recovery.

The objective was to continue this process for 4 minutes total- and every 4th sprint and jog will produce a "clover" shape if this workout was recorded on Strava!

Our runners did a smashing job with the interval session, and were keen to start on our sightseeing trip around North London. The first stop on our run was Coram's Fields- the former site for the Foundling Hospital in 1739, which has now become 7 acres of protected play area for inner city children, parents and guardians. The original purpose for the centre was for: "The education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children", but the Coram Foundation still continues to support young people and families throughout London to this day.

From here, we continued down Judd Street, past the remarkable St Pancras Renaissance Hotel (used as a filming location for tonnes of BBC productions- from Agatha Christie serials to Downton Abbey), and over to Coal Drop's Yard and Granary Square. In the Victorian era, this area was primarily used as a storage depot for all of the coal in South England, which would be carried by horse drawn canal barges down Regent's Canal (part of the Grand Union Canal, which stretches over 137 miles across the UK!). At the moment, the area is a prime cultural hub for the arts, galleries and designer shopping labels, and a spot for outdoor cinema screenings hosted by The Everyman Cinema group.

We ran above the canal side, and towards St Pancras lock. On the opposite side of the walkway, we spotted the Camley Street Nature Park (set up by London Wildlife Trust), a beautiful wildlife trail sat next to one of the busiest train stations in the UK. Across the bridge and over York Road, we entered the lovely green St Pancras Churchyard, passing The Hardy Tree, named after Thomas Hardy, the Victorian novelist and poet who briefly worked in this graveyard.

We connected onto Ossulton Street, a quiet parallel path skipping a busy main road near Somerstown, and stopped at The Story Garden next to The Francis Crick Institute- an incredible residential garden project, and a wonderful spot to visit on a sunny lunch break. Our return trip to Holborn passed The British Library, Brunswick Square and Russell Square on route, before returning to Portugal Street and back to LSE for high fives and smiles.

Fantastic running everyone. I hope you had a great time!

Check out our route here for future adventures:

https://strava.app.link/KdnZdjnP0rb

The point was that it was a lovely warm Wednesday evening and a really fun group of LSE's summer students were raring to go on a tour of some of London's most famous sights.

17 runners from all over the world turned out for this evening's run and it was great to see see some returning for their second and third time on the LSE x GoodGym mash up. A quick introduction to the work that GG does outside Saw Swee Hock (I love saying that name) and we headed over the road to do a warm up that any street performer would be proud of.

Stopping in front of the Transport Museum we had a iew of Covent Garden and our first major landmark - the Royal Opera House! While running through a few dynamic and static stretches Lambeth AA Yianny began the trivia quiz - when was the Opera House theatre first built in Covent Garden - the answer being first a theatre constructed in 1732 and the current venue in 1858.

Pictures taken we were off down through theatreland, across Victoria Embankment gardens to the North Bank of the Thames and in search of an old relic (NO not the run leader) namely Cleopatra's needle. Although nothing to do with Cleopatra the obelisk was brought from Egypt and was made in 1460 for the Pharaoh Thotmes. Another trivia question when was it delivered to the UK and unbelievably one runner who shall remain nameless shouted out the exact year 1878. This was worth a million points until he confessed he had read it on the base of the monument so 999 999 points were deducted for cheating, 1 point left for initiative!

It was fast up towards Big Ben with the seasoned runners (Mo, Giulia, Maria) setting a fast pace which would be hard to maintain throughout, hopefully plenty of rest stops would help, and at this point Lauren decided she was going to race the group back to base, merging into the huge crowds of people out walking in the nice weather. Lauren of course won and was there to greet us when we got back. More pictures and more trivia here (Big Ben aka St Stephen's Tower aka the Elizabeth Tower - Red and Green the colours of the two Houses of Parliament - Palace of Westminster - Westminster Abbey) and down the North Bank we continued to Lambeth Bridge.

Home Sweet Home! We crossed the bridgeto Lambeth, by far the best borough in London and home to GoodGym Lambeth (obviously) and stopped to appreciate how much nicer things are South of the river as well as pointing out the filming location for one of the 007 movies and the actual MI5 offices!

From here our target was the London Eye and Jubilee Park (trivia: the Eye is 444 feet tall or 135m, is taller than the Shard if unravelled and takes 30 mins to do a full revolution) and we had a treat in store for the group, a quick game of stuck in the mud in the park to make us all smile. Shout out to Soumil and Aaron who were still full of energy and running as the chasers.

A final loop round of Waterloo and we headed back over the bridge and back towards base, with those carrying old knocks bravely completing the whole course.

Well done everyone, it was fun running with you all and some people were interested in joining in a GoodGym group Run before they left so we'd love to have you along. Details of next week's Lambeth run are here: https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/task-loading-tuesday-s-group-run-a773bb30-8255-439e-b0e4-d67a4fc71f62

Thanks also to Aaron, Virginia, Saumya, Siddhi who weren't registered but joined us - if you know these guys please forward them the report and photos.

It’s Week 3 of the LSE’s Summer School intake and an intimate group made their way out on a running tour to explore London.

By 5 minutes to six two runners were already limbering up and by 5 minutes those same two were smiling and happy to head out for a run! So it was Lambeth’s Area Activator (AA) Yianny, Erin and Rachel and we discovered during the warm up that when Yianny was at university neither of them were born…. Moving swiftly on

Somehow despite not being with us at the start James (alias Grant) managed to find us on our way out of Lincoln Inn fields and so we were up by 33.3% on our student numbers (one for Erin our statistician!) and off to stop number 1.

Just to the North of Lincoln Inn a few minutes brisk running away is a special place for many people - Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital - the UKs first dedicated childrens hospital which opened in 1852. It was quiz time for the runners who had to guess how many beds the hospital had when it opened, the guesses ranged from the hundreds to the thousands but in fact there were only 10 beds! 10 points to Grant for being closest though. The AA also pointed out the link between JM Barrie and his famous creation Peter Pan and the hospital.

Our second destination was just a short hop away on Doughty Street - the Charles Dickens museum! His former home where he wrote some of his most memorable novels and now a museum designed to look like it did when he lived there. More quiz action for the team and it was to guess the names of novels written at the house, lots of good guesses but no points this round. (Answers include the Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby and of course Oliver Twist).

On we ran to Coram’s Fields and the Foundling museum, designed to resemble Thomas Coram’s original foundling hospital (opened in 1739 after 17 years of petitioning!) - another first of its’ kind in the UK. Plenty of quiz questions this round with Grant scoring more hits and Rachel getting off the mark. A fitting place for us to get a few snaps to remember the achievements of this fantastic place.

Our final destination was Coal Drops Yard and the Regents Canal but we had to make a quick detour via Kings Cross and Platform 9 and 3/4 for the Harry Potter fans out there. And just like that we were at the canal, taking in Granary Square, the huge choice of shops, bars and restaurants and the movie screen on the water being watched in deck chairs under the setting sun by happy Londoners.

With the site visits in the bag it was a beeline straight back to the LSE and the end of our time together. One final question once we got back how far had we run in kms…. The answer was 6.66kms and we ran for exactly 60 minutes, and our winner was (cue suspenseful music) Erin!!

Thanks to all 3 students for being good sports and running with me - Erin safe travels back to Central Cali - and Grant and Rachel enjoy your second spell at Summer School, I hope to see you in a future run!

Goodgym Islington Area Activator Simon met up with 8 intrepid runners outside the London School of Economics Student Union this evening, ready for a tour of the immediate runnable areas around Holborn. Firstly, we run together to Lincoln's Inn Fields to engage in some classic warm up exercises by the main bandstand, before making our way towards Smithfield Market (passing Bell Yard and Shoe Lane on route).

Smithfield Market is the oldest wholesale meat market in Europe, and was originally the meeting point for the St Bartholomew's Fayre in the 12th Century- a festival for dining, trading and jousting! The name "Smithfields" derives from the Saxon word "Smeth", or "Smooth". The area was particularly flat, and excellent for grazing cattle on green pasture.

We then ran a loop around Charterhouse Square, next to The Charterhouse, a former monastery and now a fascinating museum dedicated to the ancient history around The Barbican and Smithfield boroughs. Round the corner, we scaled the pedestrian bridge at Barbican underground station, and crossed to the upper walkway of the Barbican Complex.

The Barbican Estate was an extremely ambitious urban planning project from the late 70's, and stands to be the UK's prime example of Brutalist architecture. Each block of the estate has been named after renowned English writers and playwrights (Defoe, Jonson, Shakespeare, Trundle etc), and the centre exists as a cultural hub for filmmakers, musicians, artists and educators.

We toured the project, and gazed upon the Cripplegate Fort from above (one of the oldest standing structures in London, dating to 90 AD). As we made our way back to the Ben Jonson estate, we engaged in a Paarlauf Interval Session on the upper deck. Between our group, we separated into pairs, and ran around a short loop in opposite directions. Runner 1 would run clockwise at a moderate speed, while runner 2 would run anti-clockwise at a recovery pace. As the two runners meet, they would switch roles, and start running faster or slower to complete the exercise. 5 minutes of fartlek running between us to up the tempo!

From here, we made our way back to Lincoln's Inn Fields via the Holborn Viaduct (and passing Hatton Garden diamond district, the location of the notorious Hatton Garden heist of 2015), and on to the student union on Portugal Street. Well done everyone, smashing running all round!

Our route data can be seen here, via AA Simon's Strava:

https://strava.app.link/CkMF1wcjgrb