Long time distance runner here.
If you're just starting up, you want to be careful not to run every day. It can get addictive, and if your body isn't used to it, you are bound to injure something soon. Even with quarantine, mixing it up with days of core work at home (situps, pushups whatever you can muster) is a good idea. London is a wonderful place to run!
BTW Great bulge in your profile pic...you should upload more pics!
I agree with him. I started pounding the roads recently for the same reason, but I had been using a treadmill down the gym for quite a long time before that so I can get away with going out most days. You might want to start by taking it slightly easier.
How hard you go out and how long for depends very much on your fitness level, which you'll have to judge carefully (as well as your personal taste for masochism, of course

.) If you're in shape you may have no trouble doing 5K at the first attempt; if you're like I was last April then you'll be gasping after the first few hundred metres! If you are finding it a bit of a struggle then try alternating periods of running and walking, in whatever proportions feel manageable (i.e. so you're working hard but not wanting to collapse in a heap.) You can then aim to gradually build up, so the runs get longer and the walks shorter, until you find you can pick your legs up properly for the whole distance.
I wouldn't add much more than that because I'm a rank amateur and not a professional coach! Just a few more suggestions:
- Don't try to run cold: do a bit of a warmup before you attempt to run anywhere, even if it's just a walk round the block with a bit of very gentle jogging thrown in
- Make sure that you stretch your legs out properly after you've finished running, it'll help you to seize up a bit less (which, if you're anything like me, will happen once you're back home, sat down and being inactive); I find stretching out my quads, calves and hamstrings to be sufficient, but experiment with what works for you. There are probably about 3 million videos on YouTube to help show you the appropriate techniques
- I'm working on the assumption that you take your phone with you to listen to music as you're going along, and that you therefore already have something sensible to wear, like an armband or running belt, to carry it in? (If you don't then kit yourself out, most people seem to find music a valuable distraction from all that hard work, I know I do!) If so, then you should also consider downloading a good running app, like Strava or Adidas running - that'll use GPS to work out exactly how far you have been and how fast you've been travelling. You can use that to monitor your progress as you get fitter and faster, and it ought also to have a voice coaching mode which will tell you how far you've run as you're going along, so you don't need to guess
- If you're prone to blistering then you may want to consider investing in proper running socks rather than your bog standard cotton trainer liners, if you haven't done so already
- Finally, a good pair of running shoes is very important, especially if you under or overpronate; I won't go into what those terms mean because it's easier if you look them up for yourself, suffice it to say that running in an ordinary pair of trainers when you have pronation issues greatly increases your risk of injury. The best thing to do is, once the shops reopen, go to a proper running shop that offers gait analysis: they stick you on a treadmill for a couple of minutes, film what your feet are doing as you run, and can find you the right pair of running shoes based on what they see and what kind of surfaces you're going to be running on. Proper running shoes are more expensive than most fashion trainers but they're worth it for the considerable benefit of not knackering yourself. Assuming that they're not one of the shops that gets killed off by the lockdown, Up and Running are very good for that sort of thing in my experience; they have a branch on Fleet Street which should be well worth the little excursion for you
That's me done rambling on: have fun!
Oh, and in the spirit of LPSG, yeah, you've got a great bulge mate
