I sat down and tried to think of twenty 'positives' that arise from being off the road. I've always thought that Ian Dury's 'Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3' was a great song with a good message and so it should be possible to put a positive spin on almost any situation if you just try hard enough. Right? Well, I didn't quite make it, but I did think of fifteen and here they are.

Maybe you can add one in a comment below and help bring us up to the magic twenty...

1. For just a little while you get a chance to live the ‘life you might have had’, had you not become obsessed with running. The experience t can be enlightening but be careful this sword cuts both way and it can be a scary place to live.

2. You get to watch television programs that are shown after 10:00am.

3. You limp just a little less noticeably when you get out of bed first thing in the morning.

4. The amount of laundry you generate from day to day decreases by roughly 70%.

5. You spend a lot less time online, because you just haven’t got the heart to look at all those running websites that you normally visit.

6. You get called ‘Forrest’ a lot less often by random strangers as you go down the street.

7. You can eat whatever the hell you want. It’s not like it makes a difference any more is it?

8. Your garden/backroom/shed finally gets tidied up.

9. You only have to wear fluorescent orange or lime green clothes if you really, really want to.

10. Your children start calling you ‘daddy’ instead of ‘that strange man who runs from our house’.

11. You no longer have any reason to carry toilet paper around with you.

12. The grass around your local soccer pitch gets a little time to recover a little.

13. Missing the weather forecast on TV no longer creates a little drama in your life.

14. You get to find out where all your colleagues eat at lunchtime.

15. Sleeping past 8:00am on Saturday and Sunday becomes possible once again.