"Run Forest, Run!"

'Puppet master, move my strings, my legs don't work'

Never has the idea of a stairlift seemed so attractive. The bath's filling up to ease my weary bones after a three-mile run around a big field. Upon my return home I could barely climb the stairs, I kid you not. Seriously if there is one silliest thing I have done - GCSE English lesson antics excluded - it is surely to sign up to tackle a ten-kilometre (that's 6.2 miles to you and me) run with just a week and a half to get fit.

'How did I get here?'

When the autumn sun fades and the dark, the damp and the doom of winter descends, any exercise I may have been partaking in; albeit on an irregular basis, ceases abruptly. I mean even renting a squash court seems an extravagence as the Christmas-New-Year-penny-pinching kicks in and the notion of jogging in the gloom is all too bleak and too exhausting to even consider. Suddenly you find yourself, dozens of mince pies, numerous swigged beers and countless chocolates later, in a state of comatosed indifference as you wait for spring.

'Tweet, tweet, good morning, this is your spring wake up call'

Well spring, as of two weeks on Sunday - March 28 - does finally arrive. It's official an' that - an hour less in bed. And it is on the Sunday before that I'll be putting a 'day of rest' to the sword, stood scantily clad (given the likely temperature) and looking positively petrified in front of Bradford City Hall. For that's when I'll be staring fearfully down the barrel of the Bradford 10k Race, all in aid of Yeadon-based charity, Epilepsy Action. To anyone whose had even a month's training six miles should be a doddle. A running friend at work boasts she has completed the distance in thirty minutes! On the entry form, when asked for my expected completion time, I hesitated and, suspiciously, filled in the box with one hour and twenty minutes. Afterall I'm a pen pushing, desk jockey whose daily walk up the office stairs leaves me slightly breathless. What other type of people write blogs? Brief forays recently, surfing and horse riding, left my limbs shattered for four days apiece. I'm a sympton of Modern Britain and my own idleness.

'Maggot! Give me 20!'

The training regime. Today's effort was my second run, a three-mile jaunt around The Stray. My circuit is reassuring right next to Harrogate District Hospital. The rain lashed onto my face, my pristine, white leather Reeboks muddied as I traversed dirty puddle after dirty puddle secreted menacingly among the grass as I blazed - eeerhem - my trail. Buoyed by the generosity of my colleagues and friends I attacked it with determination. Refreshed, having had that bath, and sat more comfortably in clean clothes and the stark reality of what I've let myself in for truely dawns. Crap. Nine days to go. Fingers crossed it won't take me that long to get across the finish line.

www.justgiving.com/Ben-Barnett