One of the main reasons I haven’t written a lot over the past year is because my free time has been taken up with running. I’m the least likely person to do running, or to take up any form of exercise whatsoever. The only exercise I’ve ever needed has been my fingers tapping on a keyboard. Last year, that changed.

After initially spending a year just walking, and doing some “spot-running” workouts on our Wii Fit, in order to lose weight and a couple of belt notches, I moved up to running when my walks were taking all afternoon. When walking 20 miles doesn’t do much to improve your fitness, it’s time to find something more strenuous.

Last year I discovered the countrywide (and, now, worldwide) phenomena that’s known as “parkrun”.  Every Saturday morning, the more crazy elements of society drag themselves to their local park to run 5km no matter the weather.  There are several milestones with parkrun.  If you’re a junior runner, this starts at 10 runs – at which point you’re awarded a white t-shirt for your efforts.  For everyone else, your efforts are recognised on your 50th run, 100th run, and 250th run.

This week, just prior to my first official 10km run, I ran my 50th parkrun.  I was asked to put together a “run report” (usually a blog post recounting things that happened on the parkrun, together with relevant statistics and recognitions).  I chose to write about key experiences from my first year as a parkrunner and the report has been posted on our local parkrun website.

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/bexley/news/2014/05/19/jrs-journey-to-50-parkrun-118/

Whilst I can’t blame my run report for my lack of novel writing, I can at least mitigate some of my procrastination due to how parkrunning has turned me into a runner.  Whenever I have free time these days, I’m more likely to put in 10K as a runner than as a writer.