Catherina McKiernan is happy to admit that she's an addict.
Fortunately her addiction to running is entirely positive and one that she shares with thousands of others.
Yet the distinguished running career that saw Catherina winning both the European cross country title and the London Marathon had its share of off days.
"Before I went on a training run I'd say a Hail Mary that I wouldn't come back injured. There was always some niggle or another," she says.
Last year, at the age of 34, she decided to retire, but didn't give up on her daily runs in the Phoenix Park. One day, a friend suggested she read a book called "Chi Running".
"When I started it, I couldn't put it down. It talked about running in a natural way, about how our approach to running was all wrong. I began doing some of the exercises and found an immediate improvement."
Completely converted, she travelled to the USA to enrol in one of the courses organised by the author Danny Dreyer, himself an accomplished ultra distance runner. Six months on and Catherina is a qualified instructor in chi running.
"Runners love to run and any day they can't run is a very bad day. For myself I wish I'd come across this book earlier - it would have taken the fear out of running for me."
All that's needed are a few supervised sessions. "I work with one or two people at a time. We have had some great results and some of the runners ran in last Sunday's adidas Irish Runner 5 Mile Challenge."
She points out that people are trained to play golf or tennis, so why not running? "People are frightened to run because they think they'll get injured. But it's not the running that causes the problems, it's how they run."
Catherine currently operates out of the Castleknock Hotel in Dublin. "People have been in touch from Cork and Limerick and the west. If there is enough interest, I will travel and put on workshops, since not everyone can get to Dublin."
To find out more, contact Catherina at 087-2100013, email chirunning [at] eircom [dot] net.
And check out the website at www.chirunning.com