My first week successfully under my belt, I thought the hard part was over. I’d started, I'd successfully managed to achieve my weeks goals and eve found myself looking forward to the next sessions. But that was a week ago.

I woke up this bank holiday Monday, having realised, another week had flown by and my training equalled one 30 minute cross training session on my battered and beaten home gym machine. What had gone wrong? I was doing so well. My lung capacity even felt better. I was sure my ex-smoking lungs had moved up from shrivelled party to balloon, to at least the capacity of a budget pound shop number. It felt good.

But, old habits got the better of me. Good intentions, sadly, are always that. Something always scuppers my plans leaving me shaking my fist in a ‘if-it-wasn’t-for-you-pesky-kids’ way at whatever immaterial reason stopped me from doing what I intended.

This time however, I plan to resolve the issue. I sat down long and hard thinking about what stopped me from completing my training sessions. I was so aware of how good they made me feel and was actually looking forward to them. It doesn’t seem to make sense does it?

I realised that throughout my years, any attempt at an exercise regime has always featured a diet in tow. It has always been a mechanism for weight loss…or so I intend. I deduced that by associating exercise with weight loss, I was also associating it with the lack of enjoyment related to any kind of diet. It then becomes understandable that if anyone believes something to not be enjoyable, of course one more episode of Eastenders is going to seem like the better choice of time spent, than exercising.

This time I realised my exercise regime is nothing to do with weight loss. I want to be fit enough to feel my age and cross the finish line of the race with a sense of pride. I am concerned with distance and endurance not pounds of fat and calories burnt.

So each time the voice in my head tells me that running would be too much effort, or, why not just go tomorrow, I’m going to give it a stern talking too. Running is fun. It should be considered a hobby as much as painting or reading. Exercise isn’t something that should be constricted to the realms of dieting and weight loss, it should be, and indeed anyone who undertakes any sort of regular exercise will tell you, it is fun.

This is me saying goodbye to my old ways of thinking about exercise and hello to the person for who exercise is a hobby, not a chore.