Full bodycheck MOT aims to turn me into a good little runner

I’m not one to argue with Bill seeing as though he dipped below 2hr 11min for 26.2 miles way back in 1968. But that still doesn’t stop me striving to make marathon running a little easier.

Expensive trainers, energy gels and fancy new kit have all been deployed in an attempt to ease the pain during running, hours of sports massages after it.

Yet despite running costs mounting up, I struggle with sore hips, stiff knees and a nagging pain in my hamstring.

So, on the recommendation of a friend who extolled the virtues of his new foam roller, I decided to go back to basics and get myself a full body MOT from personal trainer Rob Coster at Life Fitness Solutions.

Based in Windsor Place, Leamington, Rob offers a Lifecheck which, in addition to giving you the lowdown on your bodyfat, cholesterol and blood pressure, provides nutritional advice and the aspect I was most interested in, postural assessment.

Using a functional movement screen (a sort of foot measurer for your whole body) Rob got me to carry out a range of everyday functions and then graded me accordingly.

It was no surprise that my inflexibility made me score low on most of the tasks, but while the bulk of my pain recently has been centred around my legs, it appears the root cause is a tight left hip which is dragging my knee inwards.

As they might say down the local garage, my tracking’s out, before adding, could be expensive.

Thankfully, for me, the only thing this imbalance will cost (if you exclude the £20 for a Jessica Ennis roller) is time.

Because, from my results, I have been provided with a set of corrective exercises to restore my mechanically sound movement patterns - a 10,000-mile service, if you like, to make my running flow.

Rob gave me a runthrough of the exercises I should incorporate into my training regime and introduced me to a pain I never thought I would willingly embrace.

Rolling tight muscles over a piece of foam might not seem like too much of an ordeal, but the agony was such that I had to laugh or I would have cried.

Still, no pain no gain and I’ve been advised that two to three weeks of regular rolling will see a marked reduction in swear words.

The roller also helps stimulate blood flow and raise the heart rate which means I am no longer starting my training runs from a standing start.

To use a car analogy again, I’m already ticking over nicely before I head out on to the road.

And that should mean less chance of picking up wear and tear injuries.

Whether that will lead to tangible results in terms of times it’s too early to say and I have to confess I have struggled to incorporate all the exercises into my daily schedule.

But thanks to Rob’s enthusiastic approach, I’m confident of achieving my long-term goal of a more economical style of running allied to an increase in mileage.

And surely fuel economy combined with a decent engine has to make running easier, whatever Bill might think.