This year I finally became a runner. I’ve been running four several years, on and off, first along the towpath of the Seine in Paris, then haltingly in Beckenham until a nasty fall made me so wary of tripping that I ran only at walking pace. Then you’ll remember that I did the Zeroes to Heroes course and my first ever 40 minutes without stopping.

My problem was that it always took me hours to psych myself up to getting out of the front door. Parkrun helped with that but I always felt really resentful at having to be out at 8.30 am on a Saturday and I HATED the cold weather.

A bout of anemia after that severely curtailed the amount of exercise I was able to do until I came here to Hong Kong, joined the gym to walk on a treadmill and one day plucked up courage to speed up and jog.

I pushed myself a little further, pigeon steps, each time I ran until one evening I found myself looking forward to my next run. Anyone who has known me for most of my life will appreciate what a miraculous epiphany this was. With the help of a running jacket, I even managed to run in 4C on my trips home!

And so it was that I was running at least 6km three times per week until the Virus struck.

We were quite lucky here in Hong Kong that we managed to keep a lid on the first spike mainly by banning non- HK residents from arriving but the gyms did close for a little while and when they did open the halved number of of treadmills were subject to time limits, widely flouted by the same people who think the rules don’t apply to them.

When they were closed I was getting up at 5am to run before it got too hot but by June it was 29C at 6am. The heat combined with the steep hills and the requirement to wear masks even when exercising outside made things really difficult. By the end of July I’d booked a trip home with the prospect of a subsequent two week home quarantine and people here were predicting a third spike so I asked for a treadmill for my birthday. We went and ordered it from a place called Fitness Dog Come which, when pronounced by a Cantonese speaker might sound like Fitness Dot Com (we think) which makes more sense.

Thank goodness I did as it was here on my return and has been my companion for an hour or so three times a week since September. I’m proud to say that I’ve missed only a couple of runs since the beginning of the year and so must have run about 1,000km.

The treadmill in question is a Lifefitness F3 which folds up if necessary. It’s really sturdy but my trainers do cause a build up of static which remind me of the Van De Graff generator from O level Physics. Perhaps I look like this