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