Literally, since I started running, every time I go on holiday I dutifully pack my running clobber and tell myself that I will, at least once, go out for a run while I’m away.
And I suspect like many people, I never actually do. I drag all my stuff there and it sits in the bottom of my suitcase (hidden under other things so I’m not reminded about it) completely untouched until I get home again.
Total holiday running fail!
But, I recently went to Brussels and I discovered something that will change my lack of holiday exercise forever. SIGHT JOGGING!
This is amazing.
I think the name pretty much gives it away, but basically it’s a sight-seeing tour that’s based around running.
In Brussels, we booked our tour through Brussels Sight Jogging. We booked our tour before we went. It cost us €64 for 2 people and as the tour lasted upwards for 2 hours I think this was pretty good value.
The website gave information on a number of different routes you could do, we plumped for the ‘Old Brussels’ tour as this covered the main highlights of the city centre.
Our sight jogging guide, Alexandre, met us outside our Air BNB (another awesome holiday must!) accommodation and off we went.
Alex was happy to run at a pace that was comfortable for us, which was good. And over the next 2 hours we covered about 7 miles in and around the centre of Brussels.
It sounds like quite a long time to be running, but we had a lot of stops at different places of interest where Alex would give us a bit of history or story about a particular building or monument.
By doing the sight jogging we got quite a good idea of the layout of the city centre, which made the rest of our weekend a bit easier as we weren’t spending it getting lost!
We also saw a lot of things that I don’t think we’d have ever come across or known about if we hadn’t done the guided run, as your guide is a local they know all about the interesting parts of Brussels and the history behind them. It’s much more interesting than just reading it out of a guide book.
Alex was also happy to give us recommendations about where to eat and drink and also where to avoid!
Plus, it burnt off enough calories to cancel out all the beer and waffles (ha, it totally didn’t but that’s what I’m telling myself)!
If you’re off on holiday and want:
- To do a bit of running
- Learn about the place your staying
- Meet a nice like-minded local
I would whole heartedly recommended sight jogging. Most major cities seem to have companies that offer it. And it is a great way to get a different view of the place you’re staying in.
We’ve already got one booked in for our summer holiday in Slovenia! Roll on sight jogging Ljubljana