I have been running for about 15 years.  I’ve always been reasonably fit but never considered myself a runner, certainly not a natural runner who seems to glide around the park or common, looking blissfully comfortable and annoyingly capable.  I distinctly remember when I first started running bursting in from my tread mill stint and announcing to my husband “You’ll never guess how long I ran for…six and a half minutes….on 10….!”  (Well the last minute I had to go to eight as I was about to be flung across the gym from lack of balance.)

Running gives me great clarity and drive.  It is the time when I solve all the problems of the world and I relish my regular ‘running epiphanies’, those moments when decisions or queries I’d been grappling with suddenly become crystal clear.  On those gloomy, wintery mornings, when I could think of nothing worse than embarking into the dim chill of Wandsworth Common, the thought of calm lucidity that comes to me upon pounding the pavement, is my greatest incentive.

After three children and a couple of years taking a somewhat part time approach to running, my personal goal for 2014 was improved fitness.  I was enthusiastically apprehensive about my husband’s Christmas gift of Runner World vouchers and “A ticket into the longest running race” according to my four year old – a place in the Parks Half Marathon – which I completed in October.

It was a great accomplishment (and one I’m delighted now lies behind me rather than ahead).  It confirmed my love of running and provided me with one of my less significant, yet no less profound, lightning bolts – I am a 10km girl, at a push.  SMc