I grunted as my foot hit the running trail, the shock echoing through my expensive running shoes and right into my tender arches. I tried to ignore the pain, but it kept at me, biting into my muscle with every jolting step, building and building like a colossal wave, threatening to sink me on my run.

         You mix your metaphors when you’re feeling dramatic, I felt my inner critic chiding me. I grunted with another bout of pain and exertion, ducking under a low tree branch. I hated that stupid voice, always popping up whenever I was in the middle of a gruelling exercise.

         For some reason, it always sounded like my high school basketball coach.

         Lift your knees more, he tutted. Are they even shoes with proper arch supports?

         ‘Thirty years,’ I muttered to myself, between breaths, ‘and you’re still the most irritating person my subconscious can come up with.’

         I take it as a compliment.

         ‘Probably why it picked you,’ I growled. ‘Almost there… I think that was the half-way marker…’

         The trail widened out, becoming slightly more rocky as I travelled further down the hill. I distracted myself with inane questions, to keep my mind off the foot pain. How tall had this hill been ten thousand years ago? Had it been a mountain? Where had that pebble in my shoe first broken off from? Was there a way to get it out without stopping or slowing down? Was I going to take this pebble all the way back to Cheltenham? Were pebble-related events the most common foot conditions in Cheltenham? Podiatrist, I mused. I should speak to a podiatrist.

         You’re not very good at distracting yourself from foot pain, the voice noted.

         ‘I know,’ I hissed, earning a strange look from a slow-walking couple with daypacks. I smiled politely at them and dropped back into my traditional scowl as I passed.

         ‘You’re not helping either, you know,’ I accused the voice. ‘What even is the point of you?’

         I don’t know, it mused. Maybe there is no point. Or maybe…

         ‘What?’ I growled.

         Maybe I’m the best distraction you’ve got.