At some point in 2012, I started running, after my last run had been in, oh, primary school sometime. I had been strong-armed into joining cross-country for reasons still mostly unclear to me, considering how very, very slow and uninterested I was. In any case, I found myself running with my fellow karate-ka on a Sunday morning in September. It was 7kms long, it was hot and there were hills, and the next week I went and bought myself some running shoes.

Let’s fast-forward to today: I have done two half-marathons, five 10km races and many, many Zoo Trots. I hope to do Comrades next year, and at least finish it. This sounds like a humblebrag, but you have to remember that I didn’t do any voluntary sport until I went to university. I hated it that much, especially the teamwork (running and karate are blissfully free of that tedious nonsense). I didn’t want to represent anyone except myself – I was a public speaker, not a public sweater. It was only when I began doing martial arts seriously at university that I began to regret my attitude towards sports. And it is through karate and the benefits of a great dojo that I came to the land of running.

So, things and people do change, and now I find myself devouring everything there is to be read and known about running. South Africa is a country with a massive running culture, host of the world’s biggest and most famous mass-participation ultramarathon, and possibly the world’s most beautiful race in the Two Oceans marathon. There are so many clubs, all delighted to meet and help beginners. This is a great country to run in, to see and explore. I have run through Soweto and Sandton, the jacaranda-lined streets of Pretoria. I have seen my city at night, at sunbreak and sundown, I have known it in its secret hours and I have seen it at its liveliest. The health benefits are important but secondary to the experience: to feel the exhilaration of a race completed, of a body hard at work, the combined energy of thousands of runners chasing their goals. Until you have watched the sun rise from the top of a gruelling hill or run at the feet of skyscrapers in the heat of a Joburg summer’s night, then running probably seems like a crazy thing that crazy people do.

But it isn’t. I hope that if you have not experienced its joy, I hope you do soon. I hope you run a trail with birds chittering their support. I hope you know the kindness of a city’s people when they come to the edge of the track to cheer you on. I hope that you will discover that you are capable of more than you ever thought you were. That if someone like me, an uncoordinated, self-doubting, bandy-legged, badly-built Greek girl can go from nothing to half-marathon in 8 months, then you can too. You should.

And I really hope you do.