Olympic Marathon Route and Wicked!

Today we set out to experience the proposed 2012 London Olympic Marathon Route. We started out slowly as we happened to come upon the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and took the time to watch this spectacle. Big crowds - lots of officiation to the ceremony and it seemed more than just your regular "changing of the guard" to us! Once completed, we carried on to the start of the marathon route on the Mall.

The planned route consists of one 2.2 mile loop around St. James Park and Westminster and then three 8 mile loops out to the Tower of London and back, taking in the business and finacial heart of London in and around St. Pauls Cathedral on route. It is a wonderful route that will show off the city and all its sights in spectacular fashion to the world but.......if you are one of the athletes you may want to practice your tight cornering at speed! Hopefully, the pack will thin out fast because there is not much room on some of the small lanes and side streets! I really enjoyed the route and I look forward to watching the action of the Olympic Marathon next summer knowing that Neil and I have tread where the truly great athletes of the world will do so! We ran about 25km of the marathon route. It was tricky with traffic, crowds of people and construction crews seemingly everywhere to stick to the course consistently without making some diversions but a very nice course.

We stopped for a snack/coffee at Starbucks in this area. It was really tiny and Neil was laughing at me how I managed to hit almost everyone in the store with my running pack! One of the staff actually asked about my pack - funny thing lots of looks at us with our packs out there on the streets of London. Many runners but not carrying a hydration pack! But it did come in handy so I could take my jacket on and off, add my hat when required and to have a pouch for the map. The concierage at the hotel printed off the map in colour so we had an updated copy.

Tonight we went to the Apollo Theater and saw "Wicked" - awesome! Close to our hotel so we could walk there in 10 minutes.

Tomorrow is our final day and plan to do a little shopping before heading home.