A pain in the arse...and back, hips, legs, and feet

I discovered something surprising about two years ago. I like running.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a real runner. I don't wear my phone in a little pouch strapped to my bicep, and I don't own any brightly coloured lycra tops with special breathable bits under the armpits.

I don't look like this when I run. Does anyone? Except for Kate Hudson when she's trying to sell expensive and unnecessarily fashionable exercise things?

Before I discovered I liked running, I was an avid gym-goer. And by avid I mean I had a crush on the personal trainer at my gym. Then I slipped a disc trying to impress him leg-pressing 120kg and had to be wheel-chaired out.

I was forced to cancel a job interview I had the next day. I thought that was a bit of an inconvenience. I couldn't lift my arms up or turn my head or bend down or walk.

I lived with my parents - I'd just finished university, but they were on holiday in France. I spent the next few days crawling around the house, taking ages over things that shouldn't take very long at all, like pulling the blinds down or opening the oven door.

I thought, something just needs to click in there. I'll be ok in a few days.

A few weeks later the pain had eased off slightly. I was ok, as long as I didn't stand up for more than 10 minutes, do any kind of twisty movement, or laugh too hard (which, as you can imagine, I wasn't doing much of).

I winced my way through a job interview in Surrey, got the job, and prepared for the move. My dad had a stroke that very same day. Just three months out of the dream-like bubble of university, real life turned out to be a bit of a bitch.

I packed my stuff and paid £600 a month to live in somebody's spare bedroom. I realised I could cycle to work fine.

I joined up at the local gym and developed a routine of work, cycling and gym. I used the cross trainer and bike - they were the only things that didn't put pressure on my sciatic nerve.

I didn't feel 21. I felt old. On one occasion I got a taxi to a doctor's appointment but the driver took me to the wrong surgery and left me stranded without any money. I tried to walk back the way we'd come but the pain was too bad. A woman pulled up beside me and asked if I was ok. She kindly gave me a lift to the right place but it hit home just how frustratingly helpless I was. Miles from my family, unable to walk, and no one to even complain about it all to.

Over the months the pain came in waves, never leaving completely. I was struck by how difficult pain is to talk about. You don't want to go on about it, it sounds self-pitying and there is nothing anybody can do to help, you just make them feel uncomfortable. I came up with an idea for a pain-tracking app that would convert the severity of your pain into colours that would form a pattern over time (red for really bad, blue for no pain) so you could show people a visualisation of your pain, and try to understand it better. I wrote a business plan and was shocked to learn that hundreds of thousands of people live their lives in chronic pain.

I never made the app but someone should.

A year went by, during which time I was bundled by the NHS from GPs to consultants, to physios and eventually to an epidural appointment that I never had to go to, because one day the pain went away quite suddenly.

I was carrying my shopping home after the gym, and I realised that there was no pain at all. I did a little jog. All fine. I sobbed with relief all the way home.

I started with a two mile run to a little lake in a wood near my house that I stumbled upon accidentally. Then I started running to the gym instead of cycling. Then I started running at the gym, and not long after, my sister phoned to see if I wanted to run the Eastbourne Half Marathon with her.

12 weeks later, we ran it.

There I am, running towards the finish line

I look minging but I just ran 13.1 miles 

I could barely walk afterwards and couldn't run again for another month, but it changed the way I felt mentally. When you break down physical barriers and do something you never thought you could do, you gain confidence. I like running because it makes me feel free. I don't really do it to lose weight, although I bang on about that. It hasn't helped me lose much - a couple of pounds maybe. But it's being able to move freely, to get into that rhythm of breathing and putting one foot in front of the other and feeling like you're going somewhere. Even if it is slow and sweaty and attracting concerned stares.

Everybody experiences pain in a different way and it's such a difficult thing to deal with, physically and mentally.

This has turned into a bit of a dark post, but I know that when I had sciatica it helped to read other people's experience of it - especially young people. A lot of the time it was 'I've had sciatica for 10 years and I want to kill myself'. I don't know if it was the exercise that cured mine, but I know it kept those kind of thoughts at bay.

Anyway, today my pain is long forgotten. Honestly, I can't recall exactly what it felt like. I can only remember that it was horrible on a lot of levels. Today I feel lucky every time I run.