Cleopatra's Needle in London? What's the Point...!

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.