in 2 years London all the new buildings in London will miraculously have been finished, the sun will be shining and we will be waiting for the Olympic games to open. The athletes who have spent so long getting ready, preparing and training will all be hoping for that sign of real greatness – an Olympic Gold. You can be certain that Olympic fever will have taken over London and everywhere you’ll see people running, jumping, throwing things, swimming and playing one sort of game or another. But really, what if you’re just a normal person who wants to do a bit of exercise? Where do you go in London?

The best place to start is one of the various sports centres in Central London – Seymour Leisure Centre in Paddington, Queen Mother Sports Centre in Victoria or the Oasis Leisure Centre in Covent Garden. All of them have swimming pools, gyms and one sort or another of sports facilities – 5 a-side football, squash, badminton and so on. You can go once of get a short or long term membership. If you want to try swimming then you can even go outside – in Hampstead Heath, Richmond, the Oasis Leisure centre or even in the Serpentine (in the middle of Hyde Park).One of the best options though if you are at UIC is International Students House. All UIC students are automatically members of the ISH Social Club (come into reception for your id card) and here you can find a small gym, a dance studio and several teams – football, rugby, cricket … that you can join. It’s also worth trying other local clubs if you want  play a team game like football, volleyball, basketball or handball, and there are plenty of running clubs – some very informal which are easy to join in. Try the Hash House Harriers for something which is quite fun! There are tennis courts all over London which you can hire for an hour or more – so really no excuses! It might be worth asking one of the teachers for a game of something – some of them play squash, some go running and some go swimming. One even likes going horse-riding!

And if you just want to watch you have the best football in the world (!) Chelsea, Arsenal, Fulham, Tottenham, West Ham all in the Premiership; and if you want to see what’s happening with the Olympic buildings then go out to Stratford in East London and have a look!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 7:42 am and is filed under Life in London, UIC London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.