I run for many reasons, some of which were not obvious to me when I started!

When I was doing my naturopathic course back in the late 1970s, one of my fellow students was a marathon runner. We stayed in touch and I went to watch him finish in the 1987 Melbourne Marathon. I found I loved the atmosphere, the spectacle, and the inspiration of seeing “ordinary” people pushing beyond their perceived limits to achieve a personal goal.

Despite my then sedentary lifestyle, I started to run, initially gasping my way around the block for ten minutes. Towards the end of 1988, I completed my first Melbourne Marathon. At that time, the race was from Frankston to Melbourne, with the finish line outside the Arts Centre. The feeling of exhilaration, on making the turn out of Fitzroy St and onto St Kilda Rd, and the sense of knowing that nothing was going to stop me now, is something I will never forget.

Until you have done one, you’re never sure that it’s possible for you! More prosaically, I like to keep fit, be an example to my clients, enjoy the camaraderie of events and the solitude of running in training—time to think or zone out, especially in natural surroundings.