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One of the most entertaining parts of being a freelance journalist is how varied each day can be.

After several weeks of working my own hours, writing features, editing my book and uploading stories to EssentialWriters.com, I’ve been thrust back into a 9-5 schedule for two weeks subbing on a new launch.

I rather enjoy these pockets of structured time. Much as I love the freedom of being freelance, heading into an office occasionally reminds me that I am a grown up, gives me the motivation to wear something other than pyjamas, and offers me the joy of observing office politics unfold around me.

The part of the building I’m in is reserved specifically for launches and redesigns, meaning that most of the people up here are freelancers like me, fumbling their way through publications they haven’t yet got a feel for. There’s a fab sense of collective confusion as we all endeavour to make it up as we go along.

And I’m learning so much! I’m probably more active than most of the people I know, running three to four times a week. But the magazine I’m currently working on is aimed at proper athletes: the type of people who run for an hour in the morning, swim at lunchtime and cycle in home, EVERY single day unless they are having a scheduled rest day. How they must long for those rest days.

So far, I’ve discovered that ‘bonking’ is a less salacious term than I realised, referring to the collapse that comes from exercising to the point of zero blood sugar. I’ve learnt that cadence is a term that can be applied to running speed, and I now know that Fartlek is nothing to do with bodily functions, but is Swedish for ‘speed play’, and is a type of training where you vary the intensity of your training to boost your level of fitness.

What I still haven’t deduced is how these hyper athletes find time to carry out the rest of their lives. With so much time devoted to honing their bodies, when do they socialise? Or do they only socialise in the form of some vigorous activity?

When, for that matter, do they go to work and earn money to pay rent? Or do they spend so much time running through fields that they don’t get a chance to sleep, and therefore don’t need a home in which to store a bed?

I run partly as a way to sort my thoughts out – if I’m stuck on a piece of writing the best cure is to get out of the house and let the rhythm of one foot falling after another ease the next sentence into place.

But something tells me these athletes don’t use running as a means to an end – it is the end, and if I followed their example, I think it could well be the end of me, not to mention my writing…