A little story. Five months ago (!) I started the coach 2 5k programme. I cannot count how many times I’ve started it before over the years, normally in a bid to kickstart some kind of obsessive weight loss regime that I later abandon.

I have never really done any exercise with any regularity, partly because I have fibromyalgia which means a) small exertions make me disproportionately exhausted and b) my body reacts badly to small stimuli and interprets it as massive pain .

But for some reason in March I decided to try again. It’s probably no coincidence that the only time I did it without any connection to a destructive diet or self-hating body image was the time it stuck.

I HATED it. In the early days, I made Sam go with me for accountability and would literally cry when I had to do the 90 second runs. It would just be me sobbing ‘i can’t do this’ and him trying not to look like he was running away from a woman breaking up with him.

Anyway. I kept going. I continued to hate it, but I made a deal with myself: I had to get up early three time’s a week and get dressed and leave the house, and when it said ‘start running’ I had to run. I could stop whenever but I HAD to start.

It was... not easy. I got ill in a April and had to have a small procedure and wasn’t allowed to run for four weeks. I basically had to start from scratch again. Then I tore my calf muscle. Twice. But I kept going out.

I would constantly see people online who’d completed it in the normal 8-9 weeks, meanwhile I was having to go back on myself and restart weeks again and again. It was SO frustrating, and made me resent my stupid broken body.

But today (can you guess where this is going?) I ran 5km without stopping. 35 minutes of running.

I am extremely, stupidly proud of myself. For keeping going despite several hurdles. For making good on my own promises to myself. And for not divorcing my husband when he made me run the 90 seconds I didn’t want to run.

(After week 3 I started running by myself so I wasn’t constantly horrible to Sam, and when I got home today, he cued to ‘born to run’ and made me a medal out of my ‘please offer me a seat’ TFL badge)

ALSO, final one I promise, big shout out to @bakingfiction who was my constant cheerleader and made me feel from the start that I could do this.