WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SELF-CONFESSED PARTY GIRL SWAPS A LIFE OF DESIGNER CLOTHES AND COCKTAIL BARS FOR THE THRILLS AND SPILLS OF TRAIL RUNNING AND TRIATHLONS? IN HER NEW BOOK, THIS GIRL RAN, HELEN CROYDON RECOUNTS HOW SHE DID JUST THAT… AND QUALIFIED AS A TEAM GB ATHLETE TO BOOT. READ ON FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW, IN WHICH HELEN HAS JUST COMPLETED HER FIRST CLUB RUN…

Helen Croydon swapped partying hard for running hard and was pleased she did

Two Thursdays later, and I was perched on a wobbly wooden stool in a windowless room in an old schoolhouse in Hackney, east London, sipping a beer and eating a ham bagel, even though I felt sick and was shivering.

My body had gone into mild shock. I’d just done my first ever 10-mile run. We’d apparently run at a pace of 8.50-minute/ miles. Whatever that meant. I only knew that because I heard someone say as much as they studied their fancy sports watch.

Nausea was to become a familiar sensation over the next few months. I now know it’s the effect of the body trying to flush away lactic acid, which builds when your heart rate goes higher than you are used to. But I didn’t know that then. I was just annoyed because the bar was the bit I had been looking forward to and, now that I was in it, I felt like shit.

I say bar, but it wasn’t the sort of swanky bar I was used to. The Victoria Park Harriers club bar was a small room with a well-worn carpet, foldaway tables and plastic chairs, and a few wooden stools at the bar along one side of the room. On the walls were pictures of skinny runners in the blue and white club vest, holding up trophies. But it did have a very well stocked bar. Bottles of beer or a glass of wine (from a box) cost a bargain £1.50.

On the bar was a stack of bagels with different fillings. They were going for £1 each. Apparently, each week a different member volunteered to prepare dinner and someone else would wash up. Bagels and jacket potatoes were popular but sometimes the chef du jour got adventurous and out came vats of pasta, stews, chillies and even handmade burritos.

During the preceding 10 miles of horror, the thing that kept me going was the thought of this bar. As I ran, I kept saying to myself, “In 40 minutes… in 30 minutes… in 10 minutes, it will all be over and I’ll be sitting in a bar, in the warm and dry, with a beer, relaxing, conversing, drinking, meeting new people.” People were what I needed more than anything else.