Late last year I moved to a neighborhood that boasted a commute that was far less gutting to my soul. My new flat and locale does indeed have plenty of perks: no hills to climb like those dominating Hampstead, my place has heated floors that contrast nicely with the quaint but drafty picture window in my old flat. I’ve now got a fantastic gym that I can access 24 hours a day, located just a few floors down. For these reasons, I am very happy with my choice in new postcode.

But there is a whole lot that I do miss about Hampstead. The first would be my incredibly lovely neighbors—but the other reasons revolve around the more quiet and verdant atmosphere that exists in NW3. Here in my new neighborhood, I get an eye level view of construction and the Tesco truck pulls up just outside to stock the store at 3:52am on a Sunday morning (guess why I know this). I also really miss having massive blocks of nature that are easily accessible for a walk or a run come the weekends: Hampstead Heath, Primrose Hill, and Regents Park to be specific. Accessing these places now takes a bit of deliberate preplanning (something that I am not really good at come Sunday morning).

Last week in the office I was lamenting the fact that I had nowhere to run unencumbered here in this part of town. To me it all looks and feels like body splatting traffic everywhere that I turn. It’s a bit reminiscent of Dublin during my last year at Trinity: the landscape is dominated by cranes that are busy building God knows what in a good economy. Maybe I had chosen to move to the wrong place.

“But no!” said an Italian colleague as we took in our usual mid-morning coffee, “there is a big park that you can run in not far from where you live!” This interjection into a seemingly confident observation took me by surprise. Me, I consider myself to be a pretty decent student of each new place that I land; his words left me a bit suspect. “You mean the small but massive hill next to the tube stop?” I asked, “I’m not running up and down that!”It was hard to consider that after living here for 6 months I had somehow failed to uncover every park in arm’s reach. As it turns out, there was so much more than the tilty and unwelcoming hill that I had climbed up back in December. Later that same day, a screenshot from Google Maps arrived in my mailbox with a homemade arrow and very basic (or obvious) directions. I replied to my co-worker in thanks, and then filed the data point away in the back of my brain. I had a work trip to Belgium to complete before I’d come back and see what the weekend held in terms of life admin.

This morning at 10:00am will mark the start of the London Marathon. It’s forecasted to be a hot one today—and it’s a stark contrast from the cold and rain that many competitors slogged through last Monday in Boston (to include my brother). I don’t think my body has another marathon in me, but I am most certainly looking to continue running at least shorter distances for a long time to come.

So I woke up this morning and reached for my pair of Brooks. I have no bib to pin on my shirt—and honestly no desire to join the 40,000 people who are currently clustering in Blackheath at the race start. Instead, I’ve got a screenshot in my head and a beautiful Sunday morning that is just begging to be enjoyed.

I think it was my dad or maybe his best friend who said that he likes to rise early because there’s no one up but you and God. I am known for my often stupidly early wakeups—but even being outside at 6:30am, it really does feel this way. As soon as I ran down the sidewalk and away from the high street, I soon found myself running into a virtually deserted neighborhood.

Since I only had a general notion of where I should be pointing, I first wound up at the town cemetery. I knew that I was close to where I need to be, but I’m too respectful and superstitious to run along gravestones. I moved on down along the outside perimeter until I quickly discovered the park’s proper entrance. It really was just minutes away from my flat. My colleague was right—it was green, wide open, and blissfully free of construction and rumbling red buses.

What was better—the park, as far as the eye could see—was all mine. No one up but me and God. And a ton of runners positioning some 20 miles southeast of here.

London, to its great credit, has no shortage of green spaces and cultural points of interest. It is this very fact that keeps me engaged despite the confounding weather patterns and often desperate lack of natural light supply. Here on this Sunday morning, I quickly found another reason to appreciate the city.

The loop in the park is only about a mile long—but still I continually marveled at how everything looked in the first light. The rising sun cast soft and almost textured shafts of contrasting color through the rows of trees interspersed along the paths. It made me think of the Monet and Architecture exhibition that I just attended at the National Gallery. Seeing Monet’s work again up close reminded me of his captivation with les effets– or the interplay between light and color in nature. It is endlessly magnetic, even out here in brown brick scrabble of outer London.

I think that one of my biggest struggles in life is to avoid falling permanently into figurative sinkholes where I become convinced that things are unchangeable, or perhaps have unmovable boundaries based on my prejudices. This park, located so close to my house, serves as an excellent reminder of this pitfall and means of escape. It is very possible that I would have rounded out my time here without ever setting foot inside this park because I simply refused to believe that it could exist. It only took a casual conversation with another fellow runner (and visitor to this country) to learn that I needed to reexamine my thinking because I was wrong.

This morning I was about 37K short of completing a full marathon, but in the end I found the result to be almost as satisfying. Really. I love being shown that time and time again, no matter how old (and supposedly smart) I get, that my perceptions can always be changed.

I’m keen to return to this new green discovery in the very near future—but a knock-on effect of this morning is that I now want to see what else is hiding within these suburb streets. My curiosity has been piqued anew and I feel convinced that there is plenty more to discover and love about the places that lie tucked inside this clutter of exhaust and city cranes. Besides, I’ve got a standing invitation to have lunch with my old neighbors, and one of these days I’ll go back for a Hampstead run, have a meal with familiar faces and really show myself that by moving about, I’m getting the best that this city has to offer.