Have you been to see the Asics Tube? Well, you’ve only got two days left to do it so you might want to don a pair of Kinetics and get over to Clapham Common, where the installation has popped up ’til 10th August.
I ran The Asics Tube last week, when the fitness brand hosted a street party on Leake Street to celebrate the launch of a campaign designed to get Londoners moving.
The whole idea of the campaign is to remind us how awesome workouts can be without a gym, getting back to basics by using our city as a playground.
I happen to agree. And although I now train in a gym a couple of times a week, I always make sure at least one of my workouts is al fresco – usually a jog to my local park punctuated by HIIT-stops on the way. Workouts outside feel natural to me – when I was 18 I joined the British Army. Military training is very functional, and challenges would often make use of natural obstacles like 10ft walls and muddy tunnels. Since leaving the army, I’ve obviously tweaked this slightly – I’m not suggesting you start wading through rivers and vaulting fences, but hills make awesome natural interval courses, and park benches are perfect for tricep dips and elevated press-ups.
And there’s good reason for Asics’ drive to get Londoners moving – an Asics-commissioned survey found that 93% of of us feel a mood boost when they are active. Hardly surprisingly, the survey also found that those who walk to work are three times less stressed than those who ride the train or tube. And I’m willing to bet that figure is even more sizeable since the recent closure of half the platforms at Waterloo.
I’ve long been an advocate of getting active to boost my mood. When the unthinkable happened and my ex-boyfriend didn’t come home from Afghanistan, I turned to running as my therapy. I could clear my head and process my thoughts while the adrenaline flowed, then return to relative calm when I got home. And what had started as an essential coping mechanism turned into the most apt way to remember Dave – we had always planned to run a marathon together, so the following April I ran the London Marathon in a time I’m sure he would have been proud of.
So The Tube. It’s essentially a series of LED semi-circles that blast out tunes and pretty much beg to be run through. It’s kind of like being inside a very huge slinky – remember those multi-coloured ones from the ’90s? I’m not sure that’s exactly what Asics was aiming for, but either way they’ve accidentally totally nailed one of the BIGGEST fashion trends this season.
On the night of the launch, we took our lead from Lord Seb Coe, and I’ll admit that my trott through the lights was a tad less graceful than the IAAF President’s. I got a second chance though – Asics and The Tube have hosted a series of al fresco workouts in and around the installation on Clapham Common. Yesterday I got stuck into a strength & conditioning class – all body-weight training, no equipment needed.
Some people keep stacks of magazines, I keep my old Asics. I trained for the British Army and the London Marathon in two consecutive pairs, and the memories I made in them will never leave me.
Asics have also recently launched their new Regent Street flagship store. So now there’s no excuse – get moving, London!
Olivia x
