It was a day of taking stock today, and I don’t mean I went to shops and relieved them of their products without paying. You make plans and sometimes you don’t follow through with them. There are some things that I want to do that are not too far out of my ability that I have been putting off for a very long time.

I’ve had days in the past when I’ve decided that I’m going to finally start doing these things, but I don’t actually force myself into action. Today I made myself go for a run because at some point near the end of this year I want to enter a race. I used to enter plenty of long distance races when I was younger, but I suddenly gave it up without a reason.

It is a great way for me to get into shape, it is a sport that I enjoy, and there is no time to retire, so I don’t know why I gave up on it, but I intend to get back into it. I’m going to take it slowly and follow a training plan that I wrote when I was 18, it is designed to get people going from 0 to running 10k in about six weeks at an easy(ish) pace. My hope is to one day publish this as a book as I have shared it with people who have told me how easy it is to follow and understand.

I felt tired and a bit achy after the run, but I also felt a wave of accomplishment at having forced myself to get out and do it, this is something that annoys me as I always enjoy myself when I go for a run or do a workout in my shed, but it is the actually getting up and doing it that I find hard to get round.