Six months ago, I signed up for the Great Edinburgh Run.  At the time, I couldn’t even run for five minutes without stopping to die a silent, respiratory-related death on the kerbside.  But also at the time, I was desperately in need of something to look forward to, something to persevere with and something to distract me from the fact that I didn’t much know who I was anymore.

This morning, I ran the 10k in 55 minutes and 37 seconds.  I came 2090 out of 8000+ runners.  More fundamentally than the time or the position, however, I didn’t stop, die or throw up.  At all!  In fact, I actually really enjoyed myself.

But trust me when I say, I have rarely had to work so hard at anything in my life.

And because of all that hard work, and all the blisters (multiple), sweat (bucket loads) and tears (waterfalls) I’ve endured over the past half year in the name of self-betterment through exercise, I ate this afterwards:

So the moral of the story, if there is a moral to be drawn at all, is probably this:

If you work really hard, and you stop telling yourself you can’t do something, there’s at least a small chance that you will actually be able to do it.  And then when you do, you’re totally allowed to eat a burger the size of your head.