Dear Runners,

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season!

This Thursday we will be doing a loop back to St John’s Wood.  We will run to Hyde Park via Lisson Grove and Seymour Place entering the park near Speakers Corner.  We will exit the park through Brook Street, and continue running straight until we reach Regents Street, at which point we will turn left heading north towards Portland Place and Regents Park and on to Starbucks.  This is a 60 minute non stop session, but the route has many street crossings giving you plenty of mini breaks.  If you weren’t able to run during the holidays please don’t stress – it will take us a couple of weeks to feel comfortable again in the routine.  Whatever you do, don’t not come out because you are worried about having lost your fitness over the break – it will be OK, and you will not be the only one that feels that way!  If you are having trouble during the run, slow it down, but don’t be tempted to walk – you can slow down to a pace where power walkers would overtake you, and that would still be OK.  A word of caution here – please be careful at street crossings, check for cars/bikes even if you have a green man.  On one of our runs over the holidays, we were about to cross Marylebone road and a car raced through a red light, even though the cars in the other lanes had stopped!  It was very unnerving, and just served as a reminder that we shouldn’t take it for granted that cars will stop on red.

See you Thursday,

Syma