Upon Jack Cartwright's recommendation a few years ago on my way from Canada to IM South Africa, with a 12 hour layover, I took the tube into Victoria Park station and essentially 3 min walk is the Queen Mother Sports Center:

https://www.everyoneactive.com/...other-sports-centre/

I went for my final 'taper overtraining run" doing some intervals in Green Park beside Buckingham Palace which is nearby and then did a 2K swim in the pool there. After that, I had a nice meal nearby, and took the tube back to Heathrow and got ready for my second redeye flight in 48 hours to Cape Town. I literally slept for 10 hours on that second flight.

Price was sub 5 lbs, and the lockers were large enough if I recall that I could fit may carry on bag in the lockers (either that, or I left my luggage at the front desk and locked my backpack with valuables in a locker). You don't have to bring a lock, you just pay to use the locker that can be locked and you get your money back when you're done if I recall correctly. Since my bike was checked into Cape Town/Port Elizabeth, I did not have to retrieve them in Heathrow and haul them around London via tube.

The trick here, is that you have to pull out of Heathrow like an "arrival" passenger vs a transit customer. This means you have to exit via UK customs, and then go back in through security while you bike case is in the Heathrow transit system. Just don't become a transit passenger or you won't be able to get out of the airport. Furthermore, keep tabs of if you have to connect from a different terminal when get you get back. If I recall the tube has two stops depending on the terminal group you are leaving from of the 5 terminals.

Most gyms that allow day access are here:

https://www.payasugym.com/

Seymour Leisure Center could be an option if you want to see Hyde Park and Oxford St.


I swim at Chelsea Sports Center - if you're planning to go anywhere near there, you can buy a 1 day pass for £10 or so. Lots of children classes during daytime, but there are always 2 lanes at least for lane swimming. The pool and gym are nice, bring some anti-fungal spray for the changing area :-P.

https://www.better.org.uk/

London Aquatics Center is a bit of a trek from Heathrow unfortunately.

Dev has it pretty much spot on. I just left London and you can take the Paddington Express from Heathrow (takes about 45min) then the tube across to Victoria. From Victoria, you have the Queen M leisure centre as Dev mentioned, and the running is fantastic around there with 3 royal parks, a track and the river as options for you within a mile or two. If have time, hit the Cask Pub (10min walk from Victoria) for some amazing selections of craft beers and stellar burgers.

Jack

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
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If you want good prep for norseman. go to brockwell park or tooting

Brockwell has the longest pool in the Uk. Its not heated and open all year round.

Then run round park to warm up.

Or swim in serpantine. They swim their all year round i think ;) then run round hyde park

Or be sensible and find a pool

Google pool paddington (where heathrow express foes in to)

I have to be honest though as someone who flys long haul a lot. The last thing i would do travelling to a important race with a 12 hour layover is schlep in to town, swim, run, sight see and then get back on the petri dishes that modern aircraft are. Fast way to illness. Plus you'd be wrecked. (Dev is more ambitious than me)

Depending on traffic, it might be quicker to take the bus from Heathrow up to Oxford ~1h15m. They have a day pass at the University Pool / Gym, and you could even run around the Roger Bannister "sub-4" track.

Depending where you end up trying to head in London, it might be a longer trip and more expensive then taking the trip to Oxford.

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-Brad Williams
Website | Twitter: @BW_Tri |Instagram: @BW_Tri | Strava | Co-Founder & Coach at: KIS Coaching
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Yeah, you know that part in bold....well after my last moment 3 hour training day packed between two back to back redeye flights, I concluded that I had to pass up on proper London restaurants and charge back onto the Tube and get back to Heathrow only to eat crap British Airways food on the way down to Cape Town. But you know, all of that was pretty well the perfect taper in a weird way. I had one of my most awesome races at IM South Africa 2015. Just give me my legs back and I will get back there once this stupid nerve/disc fixes itself. Next time I am stopping for the proper pub food.

I actually did this option before. I had biz over in Maidenhead once and rather than stay at Heathrow airport before my flt home, I got a colleague to drop me off at Oxford. Next morning ran at the Bannister track and took a cab to Heathrow....cheap Oxford b&B plus cab was cheaper than Heathrow hotel anyway. Sadly my mile did not even break 6 minutes

Thanks for the thorough advice, Dev. Gym looks great, and I was wondering about the logistics of getting in and out of the airport during a layover. Very helpful.

I hear this. I'm ultimately going to defer to the athlete's coach as to what we'll do there, but I've been wondering myself what's best. If we don't get out in London, we're looking at 48 hours of sitting in cars, airports, airplanes before we finally make it to Oslo (not so easy to get to Oslo from a fly-over state). The best we could do to do anything other than sit would be a brisk walk through airport terminals. No doubt we'll arrive in Oslo badly in need of rest, but I think I'd prefer to have done some very light swimming or jogging, and maybe take in some sunlight to get over the jet lag.

Life is too short to sit around in airports. Seriously considering how many variables there are in life, it is amazing how pretty well everything actually goes right and determinstically. That detour into London was one of the best things I did going to South Africa. On the second redeye, I slept a solid deep sleep and to some degree that was my plan. I know that when I do a redeye and just train like crazy, upon landing, I get solid sleep the next night. Also there is some method to this madness. I was on a timeline to flip my body into 7 hours of time zones ahead of me for when I arrived in South Africa. The fastest way to adjust to a new time zone is to get sun exposure in the new time zone with direct sun on your skin. You won't get that sitting around in airport. Taking the tube into London and back to Heathrow is very deterministic. Very few things that can go wrong there (just give yourself buffer to get back in case the Tube shuts down and you need to take a cab). Only other thing that can go wrong is for some reason you get stuck in security. Make sure your passport has enough days on it before it expires to enter the European Union. I had one scenario where as a Canadian I can enter the UK with <180 days but more than 90 days on passport. I had pulled into England for a biz meeting in Southhampton for a day and then back to Heathrow and next day fly to Barcelona for more biz meetings. Problem was I had <180 days left on my passport and British Airways would not let me continue my trip. It was a 24 hours gong show and I needed to summon all my connection in the Canadian Foreign Service via a buddy of mine running the Manila Embassy to dupe some of his colleagues in London and Ottawa to issue me an emergency replacement Canadian Passport.

I say you will be fine. There is huge value in hammering your body into the time zone shift as early as possible by exposure to sunlight and working out in the time zone that you need to perform in during Norseman. Racing going east is very hard. Essentially race start time is during North America REM sleep. You gotta quickly move your REM sleep zone out of race times.

Dev

http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/...-pro-review-3527483/

I was looking at a variety of home security camera options

From recollection this and the Nest operate off your home wifi

None are data wired. Just hard wired for power

All thr systems i looked at were wifi BUT they either record to a hard drive or to the cloud

Both types were remotely accessible. The weakness of hard drive versus cloud is being burgled and the drive being nicked

I can not tell you why but i had ruled out nest (subscription) and i had settled on this

I now going to revisit it as i move in to the house it was for on wednesday

Interesting perspective Andrew.

Cross-post from Lavender Room?!

;-)

Can I suggest you ignore what everybody else has said and go have a trapeze lesson at the bottom of Hyde Park. Yes, that is a thing. And the word "trapeze" is an anagram of the word "ze taper", which is German for "the taper". You can run there if you must. Then go to Union Jacks' in Covent Garden's apple market and have some pulled pork and spicy sausage pizza, with a craft IPA, and enjoy some street theatre.

That's what I'd do.