I’M addicted to Frasier, the American comedy about a Seattle psychiatrist.

I’ll watch episode after episode time and again when I really should be out doing something useful. Like running.

Especially running over the last few weeks, as I’m down to do the Bolton 10k this Sunday.

I should have been out there, hitting the streets, building up my strength and endurance and lowering my body mass index thingy.

Trouble is I can’t be bothered. It’s much easier watching Frasier blunder his way through a psycho-analysis of a moderately curious case such as, well, mine.

Why, when I know I should have been preparing properly for the longest run of my life, have I made only tentative efforts to do so?

To answer that, you have to ask why does anybody run.

Why do people put themselves through the physical, and often mental, turmoil of pounding their way around several miles only to finish where they started?

It’s not fun and you don’t get anywhere.

Yet people do it, including me. Despite my reasoned argument against running for fun, I have done the Bolton parkrun 5k every Saturday morning for almost two years.

Sixty eight times to be exact – as you will see if you go on their excellent website – one fewer than my wife who also never previously pounded a street and is equally as bemused as to why we do it.

We still turn up, though, every Saturday morning, hauling our tired, under-prepared bodies through the trails and woods of Leverhulme Park along with 177-ish others.

Everyone who does it – and there are all shapes, sizes and ages – are encouraged by the wonderful organisers and volunteer marshalls.

But their words of encouragement only confirm that running is hard work and, consequently, you must be a little bit bonkers to do it.

I mean, what part of “It’s almost over” suggests a pleasurable exercise? Or “Not far to go”, “One last effort”, “Dig in” or “You’re by far the best looking runner here today”? I may have made the last one up.

It was as a result of doing the parkrun (yes, it is lower case) that I got cajoled into doing this Sunday’s 10k a few months ago, and promptly snared my wife into joining me.

It seemed a good idea at the time. Why? I have no idea. Wonder what Frasier would make of it.