From the crosstrainer to jogging - an uphill battle

In my opinion, you really discover your fitness level when you try and go for a jog.

I’d been working out on a cross trainer for a couple of months, five times a week. I’d even built things up a bit, exercising for longer, and on a harder setting.

But I wasn’t at all confident ahead of my first jog in years, training for the Maccabi GB Community Fun Run. Running is a completely different form of exercise. You use your whole body - and if you’re not fit, there’s no hiding it, because before you know it, you’ll be out of breath.

And so it proved. I’d got my running shoes on, made a special running playlist on Spotify, had a good long drink of water – basically, I had done everything apart from going on the run itself. But I could finally procrastinate no longer, and after doing pre-exercise muscle stretches, I jogged down the road. And then I jogged down another road, and the road after that – which is when I stopped for the first time. My heart was beating like an EDM anthem, and I was breathing hard and fast. But at least I’d known that was going to happen – I wasn’t under any sort of illusions about my level of fitness.