Clear skies cast upon central London ahead of the Great King’s colour run on March 8th. Being the sixth event of its kind, the highly anticipated 5k run saw over 160 runners from across the King’s community turn up on a sunny spring Sunday morning to run and get colourful.  

Participants congregated into the lively Great hall on Strand Campus where the atmosphere was buzzing, to say the least.

 

 

Music and group warm-up activities hosted by Reggie the lion himself along with the staff with King’s Sport prepared the runners. Shortly after this, participants headed towards Temple station, in which they were presented a plethora of powdered colours.

This induced a moment of chaos of which over 100 runners engaged in a colour war! Powdered colours were seen in all directions as participants threw colours at one another in the warm London sun.  

Runners then prepared at the Great King’s Colour Run start line! They ran, jogged, or walked around the beautiful new scenic route, now encompassing even more of the Thames following a figure 8 across three bridges.

Participants crossed the Blackfriars bridge in high hopes, bringing their colourful vibrance to the busy bridge, later running down the south bank and across Southwark bridge, offering excellent views of tower bridge and central London.

From there it was across the Northbank and back over Blackfriars bridge. The final stretch brought the participants back down the Southbank across Waterloo Bridge (conveniently closed to vehicles thanks to an extinction rebellion protest!) towards the finish line at the Strand.   

As runners started to cross the finish line at the entrance of the Stand Campus, students were welcomed back into the Great Hall where all participants were handed a Tenzing drink and protein bar from our Amazon Prime student ambassadors. 

Everyone was in high spirits at the end of the run and we saw a mass Macarena dance off, and lots of post-run photos being snapped with the selfie frames and our very own Reggie the Lion mascot.  

Sean, History and French undergraduate student and first to cross the finish line said “to see so many people come out and run was a spectacle, we had to persevere through the flights of stairs, the uphill’s and downhill’s and that’s the beauty of the struggle, it’s been a privilege.”  

Dorota, staff of KCL Estates and Facilities and Great King’s Colour Run Participant said, “I was really looking forward to the event, it was a great experience with spectacular views”.  

Applied Sociolinguistics student and Runner, Muriarah, commented on the newly introduced figure of 8 route, saying the new route was “amazing on this sunny Sunday”.