Crazy American. Two words that go so well together. And can be used to describe Melissa aka @Moosenshoes who has set herself a challenge to run all the London boroughs over a two day period for CrisisUK.

“Crisis is determined to end homelessness. They help homeless people rebuild their lives through their ground breaking services and they campaign to end the causes of homelessness.”

Melissa, my more conscious readers will remember, took my spare spot at the Supernova run where I ran wearing the Bowie tee, but no makeup.

She is one of the good ones and is putting herself through King then Stones-esque Hell for the homeless charity. The details on her site can be found here. But in a nutshell here is the lowdown on the skinny…

The Challenge

Melissa will run every borough in London over a weekend. This is a total of 160KM if she runs the equivalent of a parkrun in 32 of the boroughs. 

When

The challenge will take place on the weekend of August 6 and 7th and she will be starting quite early and running 9 hours each day with and without help!

So what was the ask?

It was quite simple, Melissa asked…

• Run a borough with me!
• Tell people about the challenge– always looking for more helpers/runners!
• Donate to my CrisisUK JustGiving page
• If you happen to know a sports masseuse who is willing to make house calls, send them my way!

I offered to do numbers 1 to 3, as I only know of two sports masseuses and neither make house calls. Here is her weekend.

Note: Those who help get these awesome badges (pins in American).

My Bit

For my sins I get Camden, as Hampstead sits within it, and this would been OK if Melissa had let me pick our route. The gentle paths of Regent’s Park, a lap or two of the track and a pause atop Primrose Hill to survey the best view of London. But nooooooo! That would have been too easy. Melissa gave me a start and end point, disconcertingly at the top of the notorious Swain’s Lane of Pain. How is that for being born under a bad sign?

And today I tried the route out, with one major difference. Rather than the 1.4KM climb from bottom to top, I ran down Swain’s Lane of Pain. DOWN! Who would have thought of something quite so simple? But it worked.

From the bottom and heading to Parliament Hill I traversed Hampstead Heath before joining what is a chunk of my local Parkrun route, circling (more like the Batman symbol really) and then going back up to the top using the stop-start climbs of Millfield Lane, turning onto Merton Lane at an ice cream van that is so ever-present it is on Google Streetview, and finally onto West Hill and back to the start.

Should be fun, and is for a worthy cause, so please, take a read of Melissa’s site. And support the Moosenshoes Running the Boroughs Challenge for CrisisUK.