Hampstead Heath

The last few days have been full of firsts, including my first visit to London's only Kyrgyz restaurant (to my knowledge) and the purchase of my first proper trail shoes. This gave me the opportunity and incentive to run off my samsi, lagman and plov on Hampstead Heath today.

One of the reasons that I like running in London is that, having grown up here, many places have very old memories for me. For example, my slight fear of dogs was clearly down to our family's habit of going for a walk on the Heath every Sunday morning prior to lunch until I was in my teens. Here, I was regularly attacked by hounds that were, for the most part, bigger than I was. Even today, I found my way barred by an Old English Sheepdog, who refused to let me past.

Going to the Heath has some great advantages over my usual routes. This was my first real off-road running and the first on anything like hilly terrain - central London is actually pretty flat. On the other hand, it's a bit of a probe having to commute to your run - the Heath is a bit far for me to run to, then around, then back again. Apologies to those on the tube on the way home who had to put up with a somewhat feral-smelling man.

Speaking of memories, the view from Parliament Hill (above) was as cool as I could remember (maybe better, now that Canary Wharf is in existence and viewable) and it was good to see my and my brother's tree from all those years ago still standing there. Check it out - perfectly designed for climbing:

I eat rubbish

Many of my pics seem to be scenes on the Thames. This is partly because a lot of my runs involve travelling along the river, in order to have a bit of scenery to look at and to avoid traffic (the same reason I'm keen on the Regent's Canal and London's parks). Yesterday saw me take in all of the above - along the North bank to Westminster, then up through St James' Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, Regent's Park and then back along the canal. As I hit the Thames south of St Paul's, I saw this craft and couldn't help taking the picture to the right - somehow it seemed fitting in so many ways. 40 tonnes of rubbish is a lot - possibly even more than I could manage though...

NYC

Amidst the excitement of a 5-day marketing trip to Boston, New York, Denver, Kansas City and Chicago, there was a little bit of time for a run. This took me up 5th Avenue to Central Park, past a huge ice rink and the Guggenheim, to the reservoir and then back home again. I looked like a bit of a loser taking my snaps ("night scenery" mode involves me standing stationary for about 20 seconds desperately trying not to jog the camera), but a couple of good ones came out and no one laughed at or mugged me...

Snow

I took the opportunity to make a slight detour on yesterday's run down to Battersea to pass by a building opposite my company's old office. Some cursory googling has revealed that it was designed by Whinney, Son and Austen Hall for Credit Lyonnais and, when it was finished in 1977, was the first building in the world to be entirely clad in glass-fibre-reinforced cement. I just think it looks cool.

Further on, I came across the last remaining evidence of last week's snow falls, that were so successful in stopping public transport everywhere.

Off to the States for 5 days now with work - I'll be taking my trainers and camera in case I'm able to fit in a run...

Cranes and African hunting dogs

So there I was, thinking: "these building sites look quite cool, I'm going to use those on the blog this week". The sheer number of cranes in London, particularly the City, has always fascinated me. Even before the recent economic "wobble", it always seemed a bit weird that we'd need quite that much office space. Now, it just looks ridiculous. I particularly like the second one, of the Old Street roundabout with the Lloyds building and a tiny bit of Gherkin pointing up above the new development (the Bézier apartments - "curves in all the right places" apparently)...

Anyway, I continued along my Regent's Canal run full of further thoughts:
"It's not that embarrassing wearing tights [see first ever post] to run in, apart from those bits around Camden Lock and Islington where people can actually see you";
"It's nice to get back on a run after a two-week layoff";
"I look forward to my lunch of Jerusalem artichoke soup and the after-effects, which should coincide neatly with Super Bowl 43 (let's hope Kurt Warner can give it a go)"
"It's amazing how carrying a camera makes you notice things when running - things you'd probably miss otherwise"...

At which point - how right I was - I spotted these fellas behind one of the fences at London Zoo. Pretty cool guys, trotting along here and there. Now, admittedly the sign at the back says "giraffes" but I'm pretty sure they're not. My best guess is that they're African hunting dogs, seeing as the London Zoo website seems to admit to them owning some of them. Apparently they "mostly hunt medium-sized antelope". Even better, "the preferred species [varies] according to the most abundant prey species in the area". I wonder what they subsist on in London. Pigeons and children?

Kocen at 3,275m

Didn't run this weekend due to my company's ski weekend in Chamonix. Amongst the lunacy, some exercise was done in place of running and this morning's skiing involved some of the best, lightest powder I've ever seen, thankfully making up for Thursday and Friday's weather-restricted efforts. The pic to the left was at the top of the Grand Montets just before we ignored the "do not enter" barrier and had one of the most glee-inducing skis of my life.

Quickie

I only had a little time to spare on Sunday morning, as I had to trek out to Oxshott to see my friend Dom, who I was taking to see Jimmy Carr in the evening with another friend Nick. Dom's had the shitty misfortune to have a stroke and getting around is on the tricky side for him, but we had a good night. I always feel guilty at not seeing Dom often enough and it was great to get him out and about. He retains his ability to combine an incredibly acerbic wit with an amazing disarming boyish charm and is one of the best people I know, though obviously life can be understandably trying for him post-stroke. He's definitely going to be one of the beneficiaries of MdS sponsorship when the time comes...

Anyway - the pic of Sunday's quick 8-miler is this building (left) just to the West of the Tate Modern, as seen from the wobbly bridge. Nothing as grand as a cathedral, but I find it quite striking - it reminds me so much of Brueghel's "Tower of Babel" (right) every time I see it.

Pretentious, moi? Hopefully there won't be too many posts like this one. Not sure I could keep up this kind of highbrow effort all year...

Frozen London

Having spent the latter portions of last night in the York and Albany trying to decide whether my favorite cocktail was a Sazerac, an Old Fashioned or some kind of modified Negroni, I wasn't in much of a mood to run this morning. However, I only had a limited time before I had to head off for a great lunch with Gus, Ali and 3-week-old Jess, so I had to get my skates on...

The Regent's Canal was looking especially cool, still frozen although this probably won't last much longer. I really love running along the canal. It's like you're no longer in London - the view above really doesn't look like you're in Zone 1. I wish I'd known about the canal when I was training for the marathon three years ago, rather than running endless laps of Regent's Park. And I also enjoyed the prancing dog at the top of Primrose Hill (below), with the amazing skyline behind. Worth clicking on for the full image I reckon.

I got a few other good shots but I think I'm going to save some of the views for later in the year - I don't want to run out of interesting things to post.

Finally, I discussed this blog with my friend Refik last night and apparently blogs are neither required to be neither interesting nor relevant (if anything, the opposite is true), so I'm going to open up access to it for everyone. I bet the world can't wait.

The first (money) shot

I've already got the feeling that it's going to be hard to take enough good snaps to keep this blog really interesting, but I did manage to take a few on a cold and hazy night on Thursday. It was a quick run along the South Bank of the Thames to Westminster Bridge and back along the North. I stopped for pics quite a few times and must have looked pretty odd to the passers-by - a jogger in shorts, probably steaming a bit with sweat, stopping occasionally and taking photos of London. It proved tough to hold the camera steady for long enough to get decent shots given that it was night-time, but I did manage this one after running across the Wobbly Bridge to get to the Tate Modern.

There were about 10x as many runners out as usual, presumably because of resolutions for 2009. Poor guys, to have started just as the weather turned properly nippy...

Bumped into Julia M when I was about 5 mins from home and had a quick chat - nice to see her!

Wow what is this "blogging" thing?

2009. And I now have a blog. Not late to the party at all.

This idea has been spawned from a variety of thoughts of mine, mainly the desire to chronicle the time between now and the Marathon des Sables in March/April 2010. It's partly a product of a run I went on at the weekend, when the Regent's Canal was frozen and beautiful, and the crisp January view from the top of Primrose Hill was pretty cool. And also my long-standing desire (hopefully to be fulfilled soon) to get round to taking a photo of the East of St Paul's cathedral before a new building goes up in the way. Finally, I thought it would be a way to keep me entertained on the multiple training runs etc that I'm going to have to undertake this year - I'll take my camera, and try to get a photo each time. Or something. We'll see how it works out, and whether I end up making the site public rather than just being my diary...

To get things off to an undoubtedly unpleasant start, a slight cheat of a pic of me from the Bedford half-marathon - cheating because it was in December 08. Good fun - 1h34m was better than I expected and 5m faster than my only other half-marathon a whole decade ago. Thanks to Al W and Han M for the idea of running it, and to my sister for the early full Xmas lunch afterwards.

Enough for now. Hopefully the next post will feature my first "action shot".