Hooray hooray - I've done my first 10k

Myself, left with my dad Colin and brother Andrew after the Reepham 10K

Blisteringly hot August morning, probably the last thing you'd want to do today was go for a run, but today was the day I completed my first 10K.

For someone who has had asthma for 26 years, the thought of running more than a football pitch has normally filled me with dread, but a year and a half after starting work outs with Bury-based bootcamp Liberte Fitness, I took up the challenge of a 10K.

My dad, who is 65, is a fitness fan and regularly fills his recently retired days with hour-long jaunts around the streets of Norwich, so it was always going to be a challenge to beat him and my my brother, 38, in a six-mile stretch around rural Norfolk.

I signed us all up for the Reepham 10K and after a bit of training we were all set.

The weather was glorious - beach weather in fact. Not running weather at all. There was no air and it was too still - we were advised to take water at every stop and there were six of them, one at every mile.

Even after the minimum of training a 10K is still not that hard. Sure there were times when I felt weak and tired and wanted to stop, there were times I did stop, usually at the water stops to cool myself down. There were times I could feel my nipples hurting (they eventually started bleeding - hooray, jogger's nipple!) but it wasn't that exhausting, just boiling, boiling hot.

I was fired up to finish the run in an hour, and I was gutted to have completed the race in 61 minutes and 31 seconds, 12 minutes behind my dad, 10 minutes behind my brother and 251st out of 300.

The rest of the field were club runners, so to beat one six of them did me proud.

The time may be a bit on the slow side, but this sports junkie may have found a new sport to fall in love with.