Today is the first anniversary of my first proper run. It was on Sunday 27th last year when I resolved to try out running during a hungover conversation in a cafe in Prestatyn. I wasn’t really sure how it would go, but I was recommended two apps – runkeeper and couch to 5k. I installed these and off I went, on the treadmill, to see how I’d get on.

We had bought the treadmill, probably about 10 years earlier when we lived in our last house. Back then I’d given it a few goes, but had flagged, tried running outside a couple of times, but had given up. It was a bit of a failure. This time I was determined to give it a good shot.

By the third or fourth day, I decided to run outside. With the encouragement of friends on Facebook, who had been an amazing source of encouragement. And so I plugged away at it – through most of February.

Jude had signed up to do the Manchester 10k in May and so I signed up along with Lorna – who had been encouraging me to run. When I completed the race it felt like the most brilliant thing possible. By that point the two of us had signed up for the Birmingham half marathon in October.

It’s fair to say that rather than pick up, the training took a bit of a nose-dive after the 10k. There was work to be done. I’d had a big customer go bust on me and there was a bit of scrambling with work to make the numbers add up again.

I tried running the Juneathon, but I had hurt my foot in the 10k and it scuppered me within a couple of days of the month starting. I did lots of other exercising through the month, but I’d fallen at the first hurdle. I was also having trouble with my chest and had to go to the doctors to get checked over and they prescribed some asthma prevention drugs. I’d had asthma when I was young and was concerned when it appeared to become a problem again.

Then it was summer holidays and then our Autumn in Abersoch. It was difficult finding time to run when I had the children by myself, so could only get out when Jude or my parents were down at the same time as me.

By the time we went to Northern Ireland with Lorna and Matthias I was feeling pretty unfit and ill-prepared, and I struggled on our runs when we were there.

The prospect of a half marathon in two months had me out running again and I maintained an ad-hoc training schedule; basically making it up as I went along. This was bad. The other bad thing was that Lorna had an accident and her injury meant that she couldn’t do the run in October. Through September and October it felt like it was a very lonely pursuit, there were pressures around work and I was very anxious about how the half marathon would go. By the time race day came, I was in a bad way and my head was not at all right. I got around the course in three hours, but my heart wasn’t in it.

In retrospect it’s a shame, and perhaps I should have pulled out. My feeling earlier in the year had been that if I could run a half marathon, then I could do anything. By the time the race came along I felt pretty isolated, alone and on the day, unhappy.

Training tailed off again but picked up again when we decided to do the Milton Keynes half marathon in March 2014. I started getting back in to something more like regular training again mid-way through December and resolved to get through Janathon – which is one run and one weights session from completion.

So I’ve got through a year of enthusiastic starts, followed by stop-start training, a 5k then three 10k’s and a half marathon completed.

Throughout the year my friends have been a brilliant source of encouragement and by sharing runs, problems and successes on Facebook there has always been someone to cheer or to lend some words of advice. It’s really appreciated.

I’m glad that I’ve done Janathon. It’s cleared my head of a lot of rubbish that was floating around. In particular I’m glad that I’ve basically stuck to the half marathon programme. That was my downfall last year and the lesson learned is to stick to the damned training programme, through hell or high water. The other lesson has been to do the strength training, that has helped a lot.

I’m aiming for 2014 to be a lot more disciplined. I’m tempted to enter a full marathon in the autumn (maybe Amsterdam). This would mean that I’d have very little time to rest and slip into bad habits after the MK half.

Oh, and I ran today – it’s still Janathon and my schedule told me to run 3 miles with occasional intervals. Which I did! It took 32:33 so it was a reasonable pace for me, but I had to stop a couple of times for traffic, headphones not working and at one point runkeeper tried to take a photo and I couldn’t see how to turn off the camera. Weights tomorrow, then a 3 mile run on Friday in Llandudno, back to where I’d first resolved to go out running. Then I think I’ll have a beer.