Running route in Central London

Hi,

Will be staying in London for a couple of nights at the end of this week, staying near Convent Gardens. Anyone know of a good running routes - like to avoid traffic and crowds as much as poss; but realise that will be tricky unless I set off real early. I was thinking of heading to thames or the royal parks....

You can run almost uninterrupted along Embankment (the North bank of the River Thames) and then back along the South Bank, crossing over the bridge when you've had enough. A loop from Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge is about 6/7 miles I think?

I always head for the parks when I am in London- Green Park and St James' Park are reasonably close.

You're not too far from the Regent's Canal.

Long flat pathways, traffic free and lots of interesting sites to see

How far do you want to run? I'm currently temporarily staying in central Covent Garden and so have been trying to discover suitable routes.

So, running down to Waterloo bridge, crossing it, heading east to the Tate Modern / Globe is 1.5 miles. Then from there you can double back and run back the other way, past London Eye and Westminster, cross the bridge there and either run back along the Embankment to emerge at the north side of  Waterloo Bridge or carry on running the other way to Battersea bridge. If you're running early in the morning, watch out for iciness on the paths by the river. Oh, and during rush hours and during the day at weekends there's a real bottleneck on the path around Blackfriars station as everyone is funnelled into a sort of tunnel.

Heading north rather than south, you can run from central Covent Garden to Oxford Street (only one for early mornings, this one - too many tourists otherwise) then up Portland Place to Regent's Park, one lap of the outer circle then back to Covent Garden through Bloomsbury and it's just over six miles. I extended that run to 15 miles at the weekend by adding another lap of the park and then joining the canal path (cross the little bridge by the zoo entrance) and running to Little Venice and back (two miles each way) before running back through the Park and then Great Portland Street and Bloomsbury. Regent's canal path is great but I don't know if it's lit at night so I've only tried it during daytime?

When I run in London I run along the river - usually about 5 miles between Blackfriars and Vauxhall bridges.

YCRA - how long is Regent's Canal? I'm trying to look online but unsure exactly. I've just moved to Southwark so looking for some good long runs and might incorporate Regent's canal into it from Shadwell basin?