I've run through every London borough – now I just have to run the marathon
I travelled the length and breadth of the capital in preparation for this Sunday's London Marathon
• Read all Dave Hill's blogposts charting his training here
• Read all Dave Hill's blogposts charting his training here
Dave Hill prepared for the London marathon by running through every borough in the capital. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
I have a fistful of reasons for entering Sunday's London Marathon. They include being in the grip of a combined death wish and mid-life crisis, though I never, ever mention that in public. Another reason is a sense of duty: how can any self-respecting London blogger and commentator be worthy of the description without having taken part in the capital's greatest sporting and mass participation event? Then there's a campaigning itch to scratch: I've written a lot about the capital's deepening and deeply troubling housing crisis of late, so it seems fitting to be raising money for the distinguished national housing charity Shelter. And preparing for the marathon provided me too with a pretext for doing something I might otherwise never have got round to – travelling the mighty length and breadth of Greater London on foot.
The experience of Running London – and, in parts, walking it with an open A-Z and a slight limp – has been partly what the Victorians might have called an improving experience, partly a lot of fun and never less than a journey of enlightenment. I embarked on the endeavour upon leaving the gentlemen's toilet of a shopping mall in Uxbridge last August and have never looked back, except to ensure that I wasn't being followed by sheep or vigilantes in the wilds of Barnet and when seeking to confirm my strong suspicion that I'd just jogged past one of the metropolis's finest poets under a railway bridge in Herne Hill. I have passed through all 32 of London's boroughs and the City. I completed the physical part of the task when I arrived in Upminster last Wednesday. The writing part will be all over by Thursday.
From Uxbridge in the far west to Upminster in the far east. It has a certain U-ish symmetry, don't you think? Yet my route was often barely planned, a failing I shall dignify by stressing the benefits that can accrue from acts of spontaneity, such as chancing upon the suburban sewage works that emit the legendary "Mogden pong" and accidentally falling off the edge of urban civilisation into the seething badlands others know as "Surrey".
The beauty of travelling by foot, even at anything up to a practically silky seven miles per hour – no, really – is that you devote more curious attention to what's in front of your nose, such as a junction in Tooting that bears the curiously US Deep Southern name of Amen Corner and those streets in Bayswater named after Russian cities. Why are these things so? No one has yet explained the Amen Corner to me, though a reader called BalticPro explained Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place in a learned comment here.
In a place as vast and varied as London you stumble endlessly upon evidence of the city's endless, restless state of change – the discordancies of Docklands, the bared layers of the past next to the trunk road into Bexley – but also pockets of seemingly sealed institutions such as a noted school in Harrow-on-the-Hill. You find Chislehurst's celebrated "caves" and tranquil river walks right next to the roaring North Circular Road. You stumble over traces of popular culture history everywhere: the Wandsworth roundabout where part of A Clockwork Orange was filmed; the non-existent part of Cheam where Tony Hancock never lived; the Hounslow pub where Jimi Hendrix, reputedly, played his first London gig straight after stepping off a plane.
I re-found all sorts of personal memories, strewn liberally from Ladbroke Grove to Crystal Palace to Upper Street.
Perhaps it is because I migrated to the big, bad city that I've never lost my sense of wonder about living here. I'm not sure how motivating that sentiment will be if and when I get beyond the 20-mile mark on Sunday, with Canary Wharf looming to my left and the finish line on the Mall seeming a long lifetime away. I hope I can reach it without walking, crawling or lying down, but should perhaps remind myself that for we amateurs it's the taking part that's meant to count.
Last year's London Marathon, the first sponsored by Virgin, was completed by more than 36,000 people – a record for the event and a gigantic increase from the 6,000 who completed the inaugural run in 1981. The elite race is now established in the international athletics calendar. The rest of it is a London and national institution, whose surpluses have this year supported £5.3m-worth of sports facilities across the capital and whose participants have raised some £500m for hundreds of charities since it began.
Shelter asks its sponsor runners to raise a minimum of £1,600. I've managed to reach that figure quite comfortably, thanks very largely to the generosity of readers of my blog, subscribers to my weekly newsletter and people who follow me on Twitter. Pledges and donations now total nearly £2,600. If you'd like to help push that beyond the £3,000 mark, please visit my Virgin Money giving page. Many thanks.
• Read all Dave Hill's blogposts charting his run through every London borough here
The experience of Running London – and, in parts, walking it with an open A-Z and a slight limp – has been partly what the Victorians might have called an improving experience, partly a lot of fun and never less than a journey of enlightenment. I embarked on the endeavour upon leaving the gentlemen's toilet of a shopping mall in Uxbridge last August and have never looked back, except to ensure that I wasn't being followed by sheep or vigilantes in the wilds of Barnet and when seeking to confirm my strong suspicion that I'd just jogged past one of the metropolis's finest poets under a railway bridge in Herne Hill. I have passed through all 32 of London's boroughs and the City. I completed the physical part of the task when I arrived in Upminster last Wednesday. The writing part will be all over by Thursday.
From Uxbridge in the far west to Upminster in the far east. It has a certain U-ish symmetry, don't you think? Yet my route was often barely planned, a failing I shall dignify by stressing the benefits that can accrue from acts of spontaneity, such as chancing upon the suburban sewage works that emit the legendary "Mogden pong" and accidentally falling off the edge of urban civilisation into the seething badlands others know as "Surrey".
The beauty of travelling by foot, even at anything up to a practically silky seven miles per hour – no, really – is that you devote more curious attention to what's in front of your nose, such as a junction in Tooting that bears the curiously US Deep Southern name of Amen Corner and those streets in Bayswater named after Russian cities. Why are these things so? No one has yet explained the Amen Corner to me, though a reader called BalticPro explained Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place in a learned comment here.
In a place as vast and varied as London you stumble endlessly upon evidence of the city's endless, restless state of change – the discordancies of Docklands, the bared layers of the past next to the trunk road into Bexley – but also pockets of seemingly sealed institutions such as a noted school in Harrow-on-the-Hill. You find Chislehurst's celebrated "caves" and tranquil river walks right next to the roaring North Circular Road. You stumble over traces of popular culture history everywhere: the Wandsworth roundabout where part of A Clockwork Orange was filmed; the non-existent part of Cheam where Tony Hancock never lived; the Hounslow pub where Jimi Hendrix, reputedly, played his first London gig straight after stepping off a plane.
I re-found all sorts of personal memories, strewn liberally from Ladbroke Grove to Crystal Palace to Upper Street.
Perhaps it is because I migrated to the big, bad city that I've never lost my sense of wonder about living here. I'm not sure how motivating that sentiment will be if and when I get beyond the 20-mile mark on Sunday, with Canary Wharf looming to my left and the finish line on the Mall seeming a long lifetime away. I hope I can reach it without walking, crawling or lying down, but should perhaps remind myself that for we amateurs it's the taking part that's meant to count.
Last year's London Marathon, the first sponsored by Virgin, was completed by more than 36,000 people – a record for the event and a gigantic increase from the 6,000 who completed the inaugural run in 1981. The elite race is now established in the international athletics calendar. The rest of it is a London and national institution, whose surpluses have this year supported £5.3m-worth of sports facilities across the capital and whose participants have raised some £500m for hundreds of charities since it began.
Shelter asks its sponsor runners to raise a minimum of £1,600. I've managed to reach that figure quite comfortably, thanks very largely to the generosity of readers of my blog, subscribers to my weekly newsletter and people who follow me on Twitter. Pledges and donations now total nearly £2,600. If you'd like to help push that beyond the £3,000 mark, please visit my Virgin Money giving page. Many thanks.
• Read all Dave Hill's blogposts charting his run through every London borough here
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