London Run 18 : Waltham Forest with the London Tube Run

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Date : 1^st February, 2020

Time : 1h 07’ 32”

Number of runners (total to date) : 26 (7011)

Run map and details :  https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4507763871

I love London. I love its culture, its night life, its sport, its people, its diversity, its history. I love its canals, its parks and the mighty Thames. I love the countless walking and running routes. I even love the tube (outside of rush hour of course!)

So I was very excited when I saw on Facebook that a social running group called the London Tube Run was going to be running the route of the Victoria line.

If you live in, or ever visit, London, you’ll be familiar with the Victoria Line. It’s the one that slices through London from Walthamstow Central in the north to Brixton in the south via – as the name suggests – Victoria. It’s the quickest way to get from north to south, there’s a train every ninety seconds and if, like me, you live on the Northern Line you’ll probably wish you lived on the Victoria line.

What’s more Walthamstow Central

– the starting point for the run – was in Waltham Forest. A borough I still needed to run in as part of my London Borough Challenge.*

So I made my way to Walthamstow, met Phil, London Tube Run’s founder,

and John the co-organiser, before setting off at a social pace with 25 other tube runners.

I started by running with Phil so that I could hear the origin story :

Phil was training for the Brighton marathon and noticed that he was running past various tube stations. He decided to try running whole tube lines and realised that it kept him interested and motivated. So he posted about an upcoming run on Facebook. Two other people showed up. Just enough so that he had to take it seriously. And the whole thing has grown from there. Sometimes, particularly in the lead up to the London marathon when there are a lot of people looking for long runs, they’ll have 40-50 people joining them.

Having chatted to Phil, I dropped to the back where John was sweeping up and we talked all things running. (Did you know that, with a bit of planning, you can do both the Tokyo and Kyoto marathons during a two week trip to Japan?)

As we chatted we passed through Walthamstow market

and past Blackhorse Road tube station

Tottenham Hale

Seven Sisters tube which is just down the road from White Hart Lane (yes, I still call it that) where Spurs were to beat Man City 24 hours later

Manor House

Finsbury Park tube

To – misguidedly in my opinion – the home of the Arse

And finally to Highbury & Islington station where there was a break to allow other runners to join the group.

By now I’d run 10 km so it was time to say good bye. But first it was time to say hello to Graeme, an old friend and colleague from the games business.

Fitting timing as ‘Sensible Soccer’ – one of the games we published – has just been commemorated with a special edition first class stamp.

And also to do the traditional post run plank with Phil.

The run was great and I realised I needed to add one more item to the list of things I love about London : its endlessly inventive ‘something-for-everyone’ social running scene!

It just remains for me to say a huge thank you to Phil, John and everyone at London Tube Run for the warm welcome. I’d love it if you stayed in touch with Run the World – either via social media (links below) or by joining in the UK leg of Run the World on Hampstead Heath on 4^th July 2020!

And sorry I didn’t make it all the way to Brixton where John showed us all how a plank should be done!

If you’d like to help fight cancer then I and, far more importantly, cancer sufferers around the world, would be immensely grateful for any donations to Cancer Research : https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Dan-Thompson11

Please like / follow Run the World on Facebook , Instagram and Twitter because it would be great to stay in touch and because, however silly it may sound, it makes all the travel and running that little bit easier if you think people care!

*In addition to completing a 10km run in all 206 countries in the world, I’m also doing 44 runs in the UK. Taking the global total to 250 runs.

Why? Because 250 runs is equivalent to running 2 500 000 metres. Which is a metre for every one of the two and a half million cancer sufferers in the UK.

All well and good but the question we asked ourselves at Run the World HQ is : where should those 44 UK runs take place? And part of the answer – three-quarters to be exact – is that 33 of them will take place in London. One in each of the 32 London boroughs plus one in the City of London.

We’re calling this the ‘London Borough Challenge’ and we’re really hoping that everyone will take part in some – or all – of the LBC!