ON MONDAY, some 11,700 runners will run, or attempt to run, from Fitzwilliam Square to Merrion Square, via Chapelizod, a total of 26 miles (42km). It's the highest number of entries in the history of the Dublin City Marathon. Irish entries are up 22 per cent this year, accounting for 57 per cent of the field, testimony to the growing popularity of the most flexible, recession-proof way to keep-fit: running.

I too will be running on Monday, though not in the marathon itself. Due to an "interrupted training schedule" (read "lack of personal discipline"), I'll be doing closer to six miles than 26. While this is not quite the same achievement, it will still reduce my stress levels and fill me, as it always does, full of a goodwill towards my fellow man that was entirely absent before I put my runners on.

It's a stress-buster that's worked for me for seven-odd years now, an activity that has taken me up Andean mountainsides, through Oregon forests and along the Rio del Plata, a portable pastime that requires only a pair of decent running shoes and a relative sense of direction.

While I attempt to paint myself as a globetrotting gazelle, the truth is I got into running for less than flattering reasons: greed and stinginess. Gyms, with their pricey sign-up fees and monthly money drain, were out, while team sports wouldn't fit with my changing shift schedule. Running was free, and looked relatively friendly to the coordinationally challenged. I bought the shoes. I donned the tracksuit. I did the stretches. I huffed. I puffed. I hit the famous "wall" after about three seconds.

I'm not a natural runner, see. At 5ft 3in, with stocky McCann legs and a natural affinity with the couch, I was never going to be Haile Gebrselassie. The first run was painful, short and more of a hurried walk; the second a marginal improvement. Seven years and several hiatuses later, the longest distance I've managed to date was 10 miles this summer, and it was worth every miserable, chest-tightening morning run to cross the line and feel the exhilaration of all those pent-up endorphins being released into my euphoric brain.

Now I find my running habit places me in the company of the likes of Matt Damon (who competed in the Miami triathlon earlier this year), Central Park stalwart Charlotte from Sex and the City, and even George W Bush, who ran the Houston Marathon in 1993 before going on to run America.

Speaking of which, an American running mate recently directed my attention to an article in Discover magazine outlining new scientific research that suggests humans are purpose-built for running, and specifically designed to outrun nearly every other animal on the planet over long distances.

The more I run myself, the more human I feel. I've also become more conscious of other runners, clocking my companions on the road with camaraderie and purchasing Haruki Murakami's recently published What I Talk About When I Talk About Runningwith a sense of identification I don't often feel for male Japanese novelists. In doing so, I found to my delight that Murakami has already decided what his tombstone should say, an epitaph to envy and inspire: "Haruki Murakami, Writer (And Runner) - At Least He Never Walked."