Running in Hyde Park

Given that I live in Central London it might surprise you to know that I have never really run in Hyde Park. I say never ‘really’ because I have attempted to once. A few years ago I took up jogging and entered a Race for Life in Hyde Park. I did a bit of training and set myself a goal of running the whole thing. But my training didn’t go to plan and my head wasn’t in the right place and I ended up walking after about a mile and a half. I found the whole experience quite demoralising and it put me off running for a while afterwards.

For some reason I never considered Hyde Park as a destination during my marathon training. Getting there from where I live involves running through some busy parts of central London and I preferred the route up to Regent’s Park through the city which was generally quiet at the weekends.

So on Saturday when we were staying in a central London hotel for our anniversary weekend I thought I’d take advantage of the fact that Hyde Park was just down the road and take myself out for a run around it. And I’m really glad I did – it’s beautiful and absolutely brilliant for running!

I did a loop of the perimeter of the park which works out at around 4 miles

I entered the park on the East side and headed north to do an anticlockwise loop. It was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. There were people waiting to get into the Proms in the Park site and the park was quite busy with people making the most of the wonderful weather.

Here’s some photos of what I saw on my route:

I loved this run – there are paved roads all the way around the perimeter which were wide with plenty of space for negotiating the pedestrians, dogs, cyclists and other runners. In lots of places there are also paths across the grass so that you can run ‘off road’ if you want to give your legs a break from pounding pavements. The perimeter is around 4 miles but there are paths that dart off in all directions across the park meaning that you could put in some serious mileage without having to run laps if you planned out your route well.

Why have I never run here before?!

I know that the lovely weather contributed to my love of this park on Saturday but I will without a doubt be back to explore some other routes.