steeplechase

Today was yet another brilliant day, concluding the first spring weekend of 2009 in style. It was warm and sunny, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. People took to the outdoors in droves. In London, this means the parks for the most part. Regents Park, Primrose Hill and the Heath in the north, Greenwich in the southeast, Richmond in the southwest, and Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Green Park and St. James's Park in the center are where people gather when it's nice outside.

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens also happen to be where I go running. Imperial is just a five minute walk away. As they provide me with showers and a convenient place to store my clothes, that's where I go even on a weekend. On weekdays, running is peaceful. There are the ubiquitous tourists feeding those abominable grey squirrels, forlorn bums sleeping a few hours of futility away and office workers out for lunch, but the crowds are not overwhelming. Runners form a substantial minority and progress is easy unless you do intervals at the pond where fearless geese and mighty swans block your path with no respect for the supreme ruler of the animal kingdom.

Not having done intervals this year, I have so far avoided the audacious avians. I'm still building the base, circling the two contiguous parks at the periphery or going for the pretzel loop – once around the parks and then around the Serpentine. The pretzel is precisely 10k, and I had done it twice already this week. Today, I wanted more.

As usual, I started at the Albert Memorial. Already from afar, I could see crowds, attracted by the fine weather, the soft green grass studded with daffodils, and the trees laden with blossoms. The run turned out to be the most challenging of the year, and distance didn't have much to do with it.

Throughout, I had to dodge cyclists and duck cameras, held at arm's length and swung erratically by enchanted tourists. I had to hurdle over wayward toddlers chasing balls or each other and clear dogs' leashes without attracting the attention of playful canines. The entire length of the Serpentine is a playground of boastful skaters whose favorite activities are going backwards and doing unpredictable pirouettes, quite literally in your face. Narrowly avoiding collisions I made it to the other end in one piece.

There, I slalomed through thickets of pensioners and got momentarily stuck in the viscosity of a collective Sunday afternoon stroll. There were hardly ten meters of straight running, and I was out for 20k. It was a good run, though. Afterwards, I was exhausted and my legs felt slightly wobbly walking back to take a shower, but I could realistically see myself do a long race.

Still at Imperial, sitting at my desk munching the mandatory post-run müsli, I booked a flight to Dresden for the last weekend in April. That's when the Oberelbe-Marathon is staged, the race I did last year, with painful and lasting consequences. As registration closes only days before the event, I can decide on the spot whether I want to go the full distance or do a pansy half marathon. I'll race again in the beautiful setting of the Elbe river valley, and I'm really looking forward to it.