I Hated Running. Then My Daughter Was Born and Everything Changed

Start With What You've Got, Not What You Wish You Had

I didn't come to running as an athlete. I spent my 20s smoking, then swapped that for vaping in my late 20s. I went to the gym regularly, but it was all weights — I never touched cardio. I wouldn't even run for a bus. It just wasn't part of who I was.

If you're reading this thinking you're "not a runner," I'd have said the exact same thing about myself two years before I started. It's not a personality trait. It's a habit you build, badly at first, until it isn't.

The Gym Stopped Working When My Daughter Arrived

Before my daughter was born, my routine was the gym, three or four evenings a week, 90 minutes a session plus 20 minutes travel each way. That's a big chunk of an evening, and it worked fine when it was just me to think about.

Once she arrived, that routine was gone. I didn't have two hours to give away several nights a week anymore, and I didn't want to. But I still needed something that would keep me in shape. It had to be quick enough to fit into a lunch break, and it had to be doable anywhere, no commute, no kit bag, no waiting for equipment. Running was the only thing that ticked all three boxes.

I Also Had a Reason That Had Nothing to Do With Fitness

I'd put weight on during my ex-wife's pregnancy. I wasn't training as much as usual and my eating had slipped. When I thought about it honestly, it wasn't really about how I looked. It was about not wanting to be the overweight dad who couldn't run around the park with his daughter, or who sat out the parents' race at sports day, or who wasn't around as long as he could have been for her.

That reason mattered more than any fitness goal I'd ever set myself in the gym. It's the difference between wanting to do something and needing to.

Couch to 5K Is the Reason I Stuck With It

Once things had settled at home and I was back at work after four weeks' paternity leave, I downloaded the NHS Couch to 5K app. I want to be clear about this bit: I hated running. Every session, my legs screamed, my lungs screamed, everything screamed. This wasn't a case of finding a hidden love for it on day one.

What got me through was the structure of the app, not motivation or willpower. It starts small, as little as one minute of jogging, with a minute and a half of walking to recover. Every week it nudges the balance, a bit more running, a bit less walking, but never a jump that feels impossible.

The bit that actually matters: if a week doesn't feel manageable, you repeat it. You don't move on until it does. That single feature is why I didn't quit. There was never a week that broke me, because I was never forced to attempt one before I was ready for it.

Nine weeks later, I ran 5K without stopping to walk. I couldn't have told you at week one that this was coming.

What It Turned Into

That 5K wasn't the finish line, it was the start. Since then I've joined a running club, run more 5Ks and 10Ks than I can count, completed my first half marathon, and I'm now training for two marathons, Loch Ness this September and Manchester next April.

None of that was the plan when I downloaded the app. The plan was just to get through nine weeks without giving up.

What Running Has Actually Given Me

• A healthy lifestyle that fits my life — no evenings lost to travel and gym sessions, just a run whenever I can fit one in.
• A club and friendships — The running club gave me a group of people with the same mindset, which the gym never did for me.
• Time back — the biggest one. Running takes far less out of my week than the gym did, and that time goes to my friends, my family, and most of all my daughter.

If You're Starting From Zero

Don't wait until you feel like a "runner" to start. I hated every session of Couch to 5K and started it anyway. Pick a reason bigger than fitness, mine was my daughter, and let the programme do the pacing for you. You don't need to be ready for week nine on week one. You just need to not quit on week one.