LCC RUNNERS: Hyde Park Trail Running [~3km] EVENING SESSION

Welcome back to LCC's Trail Running Club! For our next outing we're heading to Hyde Park in central London for our first experiment in weekday, evening running.

Hyde Park will provide us a nice flat trail run. We'll be looking at roughly 30-45 minutes, covering around 3km at a moderate pace, ideal for beginners and intermediate runners. Whatever your speed, our organisers will always keep you in sight!

Our Hyde Park route will take us from the actual Marble Arch structure, by the Marble Arch tube station (on the Central line), south over the open ground to the long Rotten Row track running west, north and over the Serpentine Bridge crossing the lake, through the Hyde Park forest and finish out the run back at the Arch.

There are toilet facilities in Hyde Park which cost 20 pence (£0.20) to access; contactless payment cards are accepted but cash is not. If you haven't got a card but need the loo, don't worry, the organisers carry cards and will gladly spot you 20p. How generous is that?

I'll also be bringing plenty of water along with me, so if you forget yours, fear not. I've got a few spare bits of kit as well - if you would like a running sleeve to put your phone in or a pouch belt for keys and things, just shoot me a message on here ahead of time!

All are welcome - we're a mix of skill levels and leg lengths, so I'll be maintaining a relatively relaxed pace and will make sure no one winds up too far behind.

Our standard bit of info about our running group and why it's good is provided below:

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Humans evolved to run and sprint; no wonder then that when we do it regularly (within moderation and with plenty of rest days), our brains as well as bodies thank us. Running has recently been shown to improve neuroplasticity, heal brain damage in affected individuals, and foster better mental health including elevated mood at rest and enhanced task-switching ability. Doing all this in nature, as opposed to busy London roads dodging commuters and street cleaners, also helps deliver the well-known benefits of time spent in nature to mood, anxiety levels, cognition and memory. All these things matter a great deal in an age where burnout and exhaustion are a constant presence either in our own lives or those of the people we care about [who you should totally invite along]. It matters especially for people trying to eke out a percentage of their time and mental capacity for transformative social and political organising: the better we feel, the more we'll be able to do.

In a nutshell, running is great for you and you should do it. Trail running is even better. Best of all is doing all this with a supportive group of comrades, especially one which includes knowledgeable folks who can provide some structure to what can be a puzzling sport to get started with if building up to something, like a 10k or half marathon, is your goal. Part of our running group's programming will be building a series of events aimed at building people up, slowly but surely, towards specific goals, using progressive programmes similar to the NHS's Couch to 5k system.

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Take care and see you on the trails!