Let’s be honest: your friends and family probably don’t give a crap about your running. They might have done a while ago, but now they mostly tune out when out talk about it and wonder what they’re going to have for their lunch. But don’t blame them for this, they just don’t get it.

When new parents talk to me about their babies I’m genuinely interested for the first two minutes. I ask questions that I honestly want to know the answer to like: ‘What’s it’s name?’ and ‘It’s a boy right?’. But then I lose interest because I really don’t want to hear stories that involve bodily fluids unless it’s one of my girl friends telling me about her Saturday night.

This is how non-runners feel when you try to talk to them about running. So when I tell my colleagues ‘I ran 20 miles on Sunday in 3 hours 8 mins!’ It’s kind of like someone saying to me ‘My baby was 10lbs and I didn’t have an epidural’. Um, well done I think?

But there’s a place that, as a runner you can brag about your running to people who know that a 20 mile negative split is the shizzle, or that can offer helpful suggestions if you can’t decide what race to do next. I refer, of course, to the twittersphere. How else would you get to know what Paula Radcliffe had for breakfast this morning or what colour trainers Bart Yasso is wearing today without incurring a restraining order?