MICRO-RUNNING ADVENTURES

You don’t have to go on a grand expedition to have fun on the run – here are quirky ways to rev up your running mojo that will add a dash of excitement to your training.

- Lisa Jackson

01 PLAY HUNT THE PLAQUE

‘Our Backpackers Blue Plaque Challenge involves splitting into small teams and trying to find as many English Heritage blue plaques as possible,’ says Leeanne Adu, Community Captain of Backpackers (instagram.com/backpackersclc), a running group that runs from the ASICS store on London’s Regent Street each Thursday. ‘You get points for every plaque you find (you get even more points for rarer green or brown plaques) and have to take a group photo with each one. I always come away with a list of names to look up to understand their impact and how they became worthy of a blue plaque.

‘I really love treasure hunts, but they can be quite hard to organise on the busy, central London streets our group runs on, so we needed checkpoints of “treasure” that were already in place and easy to access. I wanted our runners to relax, take in their surroundings and forget they were running. We all remember the fun we had playing as kids and how time just zoomed by, so I applied that concept to our runs. Part of the ethos of Backpackers is that it’s not about distance but about getting out there, so I try to encourage our members to take off their watches, stop worrying about pace, distance or time and just focus on having fun!’

02 RESEARCH YOUR LOCAL AREA