I have just come back from a lunchtime walk along the Southbank along with many others given today's nice weather. Unfortunatley a huge number of joggers made it difficult to enjoy what should have been a very pleasant stroll. Whilst fully supporting their effort to keep healthy and their right to use the walkway too their abilty to be thoughtful and respect the walkers who move along at a much slower pace needs to improve. Getting bumped and having runners' sweat flicked over you is just umpleasant. I guess its a lot like the cycles and cars on the road argument.
Just thank god you live in London and not the States.
Over there, joggers have a range of products to get slow, lumbering and inconsiderate walkers like you out of their goddam way. The Taser would be my preferred solution.
(I posted the above as a joke in response to your original which is, surely, a joke)
Unfortunately its one of those arguments that depends which side of the fence you're on. As a regular jogger along the river edge, I have to contend with people bumping into me! I do my best to avoid the crowds but hitting Tower Bridge it gets to be a problem. It's not done deliberately and the momentum of running makes it tricky to sometimes avoid others. This said it happens rarely, but I do wish people could at times put two and two together when someone is heading straight for them and consider moving, even if only slightly - I do. As for the sweat, I'll run with a plastic bag over my head from now on!
There is the BUPA 10,000 run on Bank Hol Monday morning, so perhaps all these runners are in training for that? 12,500 runners through the streets of London ... imagine the flicks of sweat then!
As a jogger myself, I tend to keep east of Tower Bridge and plod along the river to Rotherhithe and hardly bump into anyone there.
I'm doing the race-for-life in the city 1st june. It is hard to find somewhere to jog in and around london bridge. I jog along the thames but really early in the morning so not that many people around. It's no fun jogging any later in the day, i agree the other side of the river to city hall is quieter at peak times.
I use Tooley St to get to Tower Bridge but still have to contend with the bridge hoards themselves. I use this route as it offers me a circuit back to my flat with a convenient change of scenery for little effort and it's particularly pleasant in the early evenings with the sun descending over the west end. As rain beats against my window this bank holiday Sunday, I doubt I'll be seeing much of that today.
I too assume (and hope!) the original post was made tongue in cheek.
If not, I would advise its author that if you want to stay safe from the joggers then the best option is to try and walk in a straight line. Obviously if you want to meander and wiggle all over the pathway then that is up to you, but logistically it does make it rather difficult to know which would be the best side to pick to overtake.
As a general comment, aside from the South Bank, SE1 is fairly devoid of good running spots in my opinion. You can always try heading over Westminster Bridge to the parks though. I did that once and passed Haile Gebrsellasie going the other way across the bridge (he appeared to be going at 5x the speed for 1/5 of the effort...)!
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