AS some of you know, I enjoy running. I have no illusions about how good I am; in fact my elder son can easily keep up with me these days. But I do enjoy it and get out as often as work and family allow.

I try to run the Senior Guides Race at Grasmere Sports every year. It basically involves running straight up to about 1,000 feet then turning round and running back down. The winners do it in under a quarter of an hour; I am a little way behind but still far from last.

Last year I extended my running challenges by doing the Great Langdale Half Marathon. As with any race around here there are a few hills involved in the course. In fact there is a brutal one just after the start. But some who are tougher than me even run the course twice to do a full marathon.

I finished the race in a far-from-embarrassing two hours 11 minutes, making me 140th out of 221 runners. Added to which we raised more than £500 for St John’s Hospice. So it was a day well spent.

In fact I felt it was so well spent that I entered again this year to raise money for South Lakeland MIND, a brilliant local mental health charity.

Sadly, the weather forecast got in the way and because of the threat of Hurricane Brian the organisers decided to cancel the race. But by that point we had already raised about £500 for the charity to say nothing of the time spent training as I really didn’t want to embarrass myself.

So in the office we decided we would go ahead and run our own half-marathon instead last Saturday. Just me and one-and-a-half of the office team (one of them joined us and lifted our spirits for the second half). We set off just after I got back from my morning surgery in Grange and ran a loop over the Helm south of Kendal, back along the river and then up along Scout Scar and back into the centre of town.

It was actually over the half-marathon distance – 14 miles according to those doing the measuring – and although it was fine during the first half the rain fair came down when we were up at the Mushroom on the Scar. We met one young gentleman up there with his parents who was decidedly unimpressed by the weather. Even my attempts to explain that we needed the rain to keep the lakes full of water did little to stop the cries of “I hate this”.

We arrived back at the start rather wet but happy after two-and-a-half hours of running - only to get a call from my wife asking me to help with the shopping!

So far we have raised more than £800 for South Lakeland MIND. If you would like to add to this please go to www.justgiving.com and search on my name. It is a brilliant cause.