The usual advice was getting me nowhere. If I really wanted to embrace running, I’d need to go off-piste. It was a journey that took me to some very strange places …

I’ve always hated running. I’ve tried several times in the past, even made it work for a week or two, then stopped. I hated the excess of pain, the minimal gain. I never experienced runner’s high, only runner’s low. I despised the weather, come rain or shine, and the fact I had to be out in it. But most of all I hated the plodding, the tedium, the sheer mundanity of the run. Is that really how I’d choose to spend my one precious life?

Then an old football injury returned, with a vengeance. Doctors had previously rebuilt my kneecap, added titanium and rendered me bionic. But they’d not anticipated Natasha Bedingfield, come midnight at a wedding, and the extremity of my dance moves. My kneecap went a-wandering. It started to catch and click-clack, like castanets. A physio soon gave me the news I’d always dreaded: I had to start running, outside, properly, and often.