I’ve always hated running. I’ve tried several times in the past, even made it work for a week or two, then stopped. I hated the excess of pain, the minimal gain. I never experienced runner’s high, only runner’s low. I despised the weather, come rain or shine, and the fact I had to be out in it. But most of all I hated the plodding, the tedium, the sheer mundanity of the run. Is that really how I’d choose to spend my one precious life?

Then an old football injury returned, with a vengeance. Doctors had previously rebuilt my kneecap, added titanium and rendered me bionic. But they’d not anticipated Natasha Bedingfield, come midnight at a wedding, and the extremity of my dance moves. My kneecap went a-wandering. It started to catch and click-clack, like castanets. A physio soon gave me the news I’d always dreaded: I had to start running, outside, properly, and often.

Typical running advice had always failed me. I’d tried carb-loading, but I just gained a stone (14lb, or about 6kg). I’d downloaded all the apps, played all the playlists. I’d stretched, warmed down, the whole nine yards. But nothing worked.

So this time I decided I’d reach out to seasoned runners and ask for unorthodox advice. I’d learn to love running, via the road less travelled.

Week 1: brine

For my first run I left my flat in an M&S T-shirt, swimming trunks (the only shorts I owned) and scruffy Reebok Workouts. I instantly learned that Workouts are terrible for workouts. I learned that Penge High Street in south London is not the best place to jog, with its dreary pavements and immovable crowds, and that swimming trunks tend to slide down. But I managed to finish the run, with a little walking, and recorded my time: 1.51km in 11 minutes and 57 seconds. I was pleasantly surprised.

Now for the improvement. “I went to a sports store and purchased running gear and decent shoes,” writes Haruki Murakami, novelist and author of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. “This is how you become a runner.” Following his lead, I hovered awkwardly around the local sports shop and asked the closest employee for all the help I could get. I soon found myself shoeless, as the man conducted an ocular gait analysis.

“You have flat feet,” he said. “And they’re exceptionally wide.” I nearly apologised. After trying on a few pairs, like a fat-footed Cinderella, I found the perfect shoe. My glass slipper was the Brooks Adrenaline GTS25.

I bought new running tops and short shorts, because runners wear short shorts. I wanted to fit in. And I bought a hydration vest, after reading advice from runners online. It seemed akin to a beer helmet but proved a godsend, preventing the jingle of keys and the bounce of my phone, even if the plastic straw kept slapping my face.

I made some unusual purchases, too, on the advice of Sarah Hartley, a presenter on The Running Channel Podcast. “I want to help you avoid pain,” she told me. That’s how I ended up online, in incognito mode, buying nipple tape. And found myself rubbing anti-chafe balm on the area my nan once described as an undercarriage. I was all in. I’d run just once and suddenly felt as if I was prepping for the world’s most choreographed orgy.

I asked a friend about nutrition. Alex Revell has run a half marathon or full marathon every month of 2026 and his unfortunate advice was a shot of pickle juice on the day of the run (supposedly as good as any shop-bought electrolytes). So, committed to the experiment, with nipple tape on nipples, I opened a jar of pickles. It felt over the top, verging on absurd, but I took a hefty swig and shivered.

I flew on that second run, over 2km. Perhaps nipple tape is aerodynamic. Maybe I’ve previously been slowed by chafe. More likely, the combination of the right gear, the right stretches and the right brine-based hydration instantly elevated me. The pre-run rituals pumped me up, too, forcing me to make the run count. Who knew that preparation actually worked?

Week 2: sexy pace

I did not run the streets of Penge, but I ran around them. And after a few runs I found the streets incredibly boring. I decided to take advice from Martinus Evans, founder of the Slow AF Run Club: “There is something about awe-inspiring views that helps take your mind off running.” So I decided to search for some awe. And I realised that few things in this world are more awe-inspiring than dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs in Crystal Palace park, just down the road from Penge, are absurdities. They are ridiculous things – a point of pride to locals, apoint of moderate confusion to outsiders, but somehow important in the history of dinosaurs. Dating from 1854, they were the first full-scale reconstructions, based on crude inaccuracies of early palaeontology, and the results are hilarious. They are creepy, overweight and their smiles will make you smile. It’s fun, running with dinosaurs.

New surroundings made the runs less tedious and more fun, but in this second week, my distances stalled. Two kilometres felt easy enough, but then I’d suddenly feel wiped.

Based on my research, the problem was my pacing. Learning to run slowly is the best advice for new runners. Evans recommends the “sexy pace”, so named because it’s like running slow motion on the beach, à la Baywatch. I slowed down to the extent that walkers lapped me, but my distance grew: I ran 3km on the first attempt, in 26 minutes.

Week 3: zombies

I had all the right gear, the right pacing, the pickle juice and the dinosaurs, but then came the greatest challenge: existential dread. That had been a thorn in my side in the past. I’d always managed a few runs, even felt encouraged, then the acute boredom and discontent would hit me. And it arrived, right on cue, as I entered my third week.

Runners typically turn to music. I trialled strange playlists, as per recommendations: Detroit techno, grime, even classical. Techno definitely helped, with its repetitive beats, but the best was the high energy of early grime records. However, music failed to hold my attention for longer periods.

I followed advice from Dr Chloe Bedford, a psychologist and running advocate, and listened to the same song on repeat. This is meant to create a rhythm, but it just made me despise Eye of the Tiger. I needed to find something to better occupy my mind, something to push away the tedium and dread.

So I turned to Shakespeare. “Running is a great activity to do while memorising,” Murakami writes. “As I move my legs, I line the words up in order in my mind.” A study in the International Journal of Exercise Science found memorising while exercising improved recall, so you can escape boredom while learning something new. I’ve always loved Hamlet and never had a party trick, so I decided to memorise the soliloquies.

This is what running is all about. I started the run, listened to two lines of Richard Burton reciting the “To be or not to be” speech and started the track again. I let the track play a little further, concentrated and learned a few more lines. Much of my run was spent pressing my headphones. By the end, I remembered little of the soliloquy, but attempts to memorise had taken my mind off the tedium. I went slowly and covered more than 3km, my best run to date.

The lesson is not to listen to Hamlet necessarily, but to find something that helps you focus. Bedford offered a few interesting suggestions that might capture your attention. One was to listen to an audiobook only on your runs, ideally one that ends on cliffhangers, so you’ll want to return to the story as soon as possible. Another is to pretend you’re an MI5 agent on a secret mission: “Works best when it’s raining, as it adds a bit of drama.”

Or you can turn to apps for drama. My partner’s cousin, Sarah, used Zombies, Run! to do a Couch to 5k. The app feels like an intense audiobook, with narratives perpetually hanging on cliffs. You pick up strange items, complete missions and work towards zombie-based goals. It was perhaps a little too intense for me – the first episodes consist of a crashed helicopter, a zombie apocalypse, and drawing the undead from a township – and I often felt more confused than frightened. But it certainly got my heart racing.

Week 4: rancour

By now, I was struggling to find my motivation. Putting on shoes felt like a gargantuan task, something I could not tolerate. The heatwave did not help, nor did the early-morning starts, even though it was cooler. I started searching desperately for excuses and kept finding them: niggle in my toe, the risk of missing a parcel delivery, Mercury in retrograde.

Revell, who has run at least 5k every day this year, says success depends on removing any excuses. “Get everything ready the night before,” he told me. He lays out running clothes and shoes, preps all pre- and post-run food, even grinds his coffee beans before going to bed. It’s a matter of leaving nothing to chance, ensuring minimal barriers prior to leaving the house.

Bedford suggests bribery: “Give yourself a reward when you’ve completed a run.” I’d love a ciggie, I thought, having quit five years ago. Perhaps I could smoke my way to good health. Not sure that’s what Bedford had in mind. Typically, these rewards are things like chocolate, cake, maybe a spot of retail therapy, but I have learned to tailor the advice to the person. I tried to think about what I’d actually like.

So I started sitting under a tree. At the end of the run, I’d grab a coffee and I’d read for a bit, having stashed a book in my hydration vest. My reward was a sense of quiet early in the morning, surrounded by birds. It made putting my trainers on less daunting. I looked forward to the ambush of calm, enough to drag me out of the flat.

Alternatively, you can take motivation from your enemies. Evans recalls how a doctor once called him fat and said running would kill him. For more than a decade he has proved the doctor wrong, all the way to the cover of Runner’s World. In the acknowledgments of his book, Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run, Evans addresses the doctor: “I still think you’re a fucking dick and an asshole for saying what you said to me.” You can take that energy and find your own worst enemy.

I thought of a thing a person said years ago and I dwelled on it. And I mean I spent hours, dwelling. That dwelling helped me put on my shoes when I really wanted to stay home. If you don’t have enemies, create one. Run against him or her. Run in spite. Let the disdain drive you.

Week 5: baps

Orthodox advice suggests avoiding advice from people on the internet. But I was not looking for the orthodox. On the fifth week, leaving no stone unturned, I found an “unhinged running tips that actually work” thread on Reddit and started putting them into practice.

One Redditor suggested I shout “Fuck!” whenever the run got hard. I did it in the name of science. Any time I felt pain, I shouted, “Fuck!” It was bad enough that I wore a little backpack, with a straw slapping my face, and probably stank of pickle, but now I was cursing in public, amid dinosaurs, like a pirate.

The interesting thing: it worked. But not as expected. Shouting “Fuck!” in the middle of the park, in the school holidays, made me run faster, not longer, because I was sprinting away from a succession of dirty looks.

“Rawdogging” was perhaps the worst advice I tried to follow. It means no music, no zombies, no Hamlet. I was left to run alone with my thoughts. So I grappled with my mortality. It was the worst run of my life. I ran very fast and not very long and I arrived home like a sweaty Schopenhauer, afraid of existence.

One final bit of advice from Reddit worked a treat. It called for a mid-run breakfast. I ran 3km with the dinosaurs, then stopped in the cafe. I ate a veggie bap drowning in brown sauce, drank some fancy lemonade, then read my book for a bit. It was perhaps too relaxing. Then I stood up, put my vest back on, and ran the final kilometre back to my flat.

It was fun, but spending a tenner every time is unsustainable in this economy. I might do it as a treat on weekends, though, especially once I start reaching longer distances.

Week 6: the finish line

For the first time in my life, I’ve run consistently for more than a month. A rhythm has taken hold. My last run was just over 4km. Now I need to figure out the long term – how to make running a constant in my life.

The best long-term advice I’ve heard, which I’m putting into practice, comes from Hartley. She says success depends on defining your running personality.

Hartley offers a few possibilities: Lover of the Plod, Trail-running Mountain Goat, Running Club Fanatic, Person Who Jogs to Find Pastries. Finding your running identity makes running part of you. It is an act of empowerment, open to everyone. You are a runner. You just need to decide the sort of runner you wish to be.

It is too simplistic to suggest I now love running. But the experiment has pushed me to leave my flat, helped me to tie my shoes in the mornings. I am learning. I am making progress. And I am enjoying my trip on the road less travelled. Because I am a runner now – one who relies on historically inaccurate dinosaurs, nipple tape, pickle juice and Hamlet. I like that.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.