Upping the pace - and discovering the Butt Bungee

I've done a few things in my life which, if I wasn't being terribly modest, I could call achievements.
I was the first person in my family to go to university and get a degree, I secured my childhood ambition of becoming a journalist, I've been married for 24 years, I've edited a national magazine, I've climbed Dunn's River Falls in Jamaica (Google it...), I've been in the back of an aircraft with a Territorial Army regiment on exercise; not bad for someone who hasn't always enjoyed the best of health.

Yet this week, I did something which might top all of those achievements - I ran a few yards up a corridor. I've never been a runner, I was always last in those awful school cross-country races and quickly realised that although I was besotted with sport from an early age, my involvement was destined to be as supporter, not player. I did have a brief spell in the school's mixed hockey team, mind you - something which was brought to an undignified end when a female opponent whacked me squarely on the nose with her stick.

But this week, as my rehabilitation from my stroke gathers pace, I ran a few yards up a corridor. You may have guessed that this is all the work of the amazing Emily Smedley of breathebalancebeactivated.com. When I saw her on Tuesday, after I had writhed on her treatment table in agony for an hour, she took me out into the corridor and said "Now, run." Eighteen months ago, even pre-stroke, I may well have said: "I can't run."

Of course, though, there is no such word as 'can't' in my vocabulary now.  So I did. Just a few yards, backwards and forwards, probably five or six times in total. It wasn't much, but it was definitely running and if I am going to achieve my aim of a charity fund-raising 5km run (run, walk, stagger; whatever...) later this year, it has to be done.

And it has to be improved upon. Next time, I'm sure there will be more running. And more work with the Butt Bungee (you can Google that, as well....). And more physical agony. But Warriors surely know that there is no gain without pain. I can't say I enjoyed the pain, but the euphoria I felt when I realised I was running was extraordinary. As was the feeling that I've been defying the odds all my life. Now where's that starting line....?