Throughout my life, my attitude to exercise has been all over the show. Whilst I was quite good at some things in school, PE wasn’t one of them, and I dreaded heading to the changing rooms for another double period of feeling embarrassed.

If I was going to do some kind of in-depth analysis of my own insecurities (which, as you’ll know, reader, is a totally healthy and productive thing to do), I might even put it down to a longstanding anxiety about farting in public. I don’t know where it comes from, but whenever I’m in a stressful situation (doing exercise, for example), an internal panic-stricken dialogue begins:

“Don’t fart!”

“What? I don’t need to fart.”

“I know but just… don’t.

“I’m not going to!”

“Are you sure? It sounds like something you’d do.”

Safe to say, exercise was labelled with a big sign reading ‘don’t go there,’ and a small one underneath that said, ‘really, don’t.’

Imagine my surprise, then, when this week I took up running. Before now, I thought it was only acceptable to run if I was running…

a) Away from killer clowns.

b) Towards the last custard cream.

c) Up that hill, having made a deal with God and gotten him to swap our places.

To run without any such motive seemed absurd. Not only that, but there was the prospect of the British public judging me for being sweaty and unfit. And even more alarmingly, a survey by England Athletics from earlier this year found that 1 in 3 women have been harassed whilst running on their own.

"I have no intentions to run a marathon, and I plan to continue to balance it out with cake and booze"

What, then, was I doing downloading a Couch to 5K app, and actually using it?

It was partly learning that life is too short to give a flying monkey’s about what other people think of you. Especially the great British public. Should we trust them? If we’ve learnt anything recently it’s that they’re into, and might vote for, all kinds of questionable moral, social and political things. It was also the recognition that physical exercise improves your mental health, and I’m a big fan of having good mental health. In fact, I’d say it was one of my top five ‘things I’m a big fan of.’ So, when deciding to have a go at running, I made sure I set down clearly why I was doing it. I was not doing it to lose weight, I was doing it for the serotonin, and also because I felt I hadn’t listened to Daft Punk in a while and running could really remedy that.

I was also careful in choosing an app. I wanted to use one for the structure, and also because I had no idea what I was doing, and didn’t want to go at it all guns blazing only to damage myself. I eventually settled on one that seemed to tick all the boxes. Firstly, it was for beginners. Secondly, it didn’t tell you how many calories you burned. And lastly, you could choose whose voice you wanted to coach you. I opted for Sarah Millican, because it’s always nice when female comics support other female comics, and she tells you to have a banana at the end. Also, as someone conditioned by the British education system to equate self-worth with stickers, I liked the way I could reward myself with a smiley face after each run.

Sure, I’ve only just started, but it’s going okay so far. I have no intentions to run a marathon, and I plan to continue to balance it out with cake and booze (sometimes at the same time: booze cake), but there does seem to be something in this mental-health-exercise-buzz thing. Provided of course, as always, that you maintain a balance. And who knows? Maybe I’ll end up skipping one, then skipping another, and the whole thing will fall through.

But what’s surprising is that I’m not sure I want it to