After ten hours walking, eight hours canoeing and two hours swimming in the past eight days, I think it’s fair to say that me and exercise are at the flirtatious, intoxicating beginnings of what could turn out be a passionate, long-term relationship.

I didn’t plan to clock up twenty hours of sportiness because, as I explained last Wednesday, I use the don’t-have-time excuse far more than is justified.

But I got emailed a ‘shopping list’ from the head of fundraising at Winston’s Wish which changed everything.

When you see £2,000 – the amount I’m aiming to raise - broken down into different items, you realise that putting in the effort and going the extra mile (yes, the pun’s deliberate) is worth it.

For example, £25 covers the cost of a 35-minute call to the charity’s helpline which means someone can get professional, practical advice on how to help a bereaved child, whereas £100 allows ten families to receive specialist publications. When you remember that every 22 minutes a child loses a parent in the UK, that’s a lot of families needing help.

By helping me hit the £2,000 mark, you’d be funding four children and their families to have four face-to-face sessions with two specialist family practitioners to help them deal with their loss.

Of course, what would be even more amazing would be to double the £2,000 because by reaching the grand total of £4,000, one child and their family would receive the full programme of support from Winston’s Wish. Typically spread out over a ten-month period, it would include a residential weekend, individual sessions and telephone support.

It was the incentive I needed. The next morning, I drove to my friend’s house, handed in my car keys and told her not to give them back to me for a week.

As a result, I’ve had to walk everywhere. The alarm clock’s been set earlier – at 6am – not out of any ardent desire to get in the early-morning exercise but because if I don’t get a move on, I’ll be late for work, which is never good when you’re a teacher and the class can’t start without you.

They weren’t long walks: thirty minutes here, another 15 minutes there, but they were brisk and over the course of the day, it soon adds up.

Apart from running through lesson plans in my head and working out what to cook for dinner, I’ve used the time to concentrate on Winston’s Wish and the reasons I’m taking part in Just Walk across the South Downs on May 11, 2013. It was logical that I started to think about my two nieces and nephews who have been forced to deal with a loss so sudden and complicated that the tears and tantrums are still happening three years on.

And then it was only natural that my brother, Matt, came to mind, along with a barrage of complex emotions.

On a day-to-day basis, I’ve come to terms with his suicide. I know my brother killed himself but when you’re dealing with a taboo subject that most people refuse to talk about, occasionally the doubt seeps in. If no one mentions it, it surely can’t be real. At that point, I force myself to read the first line of the coroner’s report ‘death by hanging’ to know that, sadly, it really is the truth.

But no matter how much I accept the reality, it doesn’t make it any easier. Looking at my brother smiling out from a photo taken at Honeybrook Farm, in Wimborne, weeks before he died is hard. Equating that image with a person so desperate that he was secretly planning his own death in meticulous detail is even harder.

And that’s where the anger really begins. The problem with suicide is that everything is unresolved. We never made up after an argument on Christmas Day 2008, which was the last time I saw or spoke to Matt. Even now, I’m livid that he didn’t bother to say goodbye.

For a long time, I was also angry with him for destroying not only his life, but ours too. I hated him for giving me sleepless nights and recurring nightmares so unpleasant, I’d wake up choking on my tears. I hated him for causing so much stress that clumps of my hair fell out and my face was covered with spots. And I hated him for making me stare back at a sad, bereft woman I didn’t recognise whenever I looked in the bathroom mirror.

But then something inside me snapped. Matt might have ended his life but he had no right to end mine as well. Nor would he have wanted to.

And that was the moment I chose to react.

When I first got back in a canoe 18 years after giving up the sport, it was torture. As I pulled the paddle through the water, every muscle ached and I wondered over and over what had allowed me to think this was a good idea.

However, I had forgotten how meditative kayaking can be. Gliding along the river is soothing and the rhythm of the strokes makes me think of nothing but the here and now. It doesn’t matter how angry, stressed or upset I am before I set off. When I finally haul the kayak out of the water and carry it back to the storage area, I feel calm and alive.

The kayaking bug has hit me hard, so much so that I’m taking part in a 7.5km race in September. And for that I need to be seriously fit because I’ll be racing alongside regional and national champions. I have no intention of coming last.

The quest for fitness begins which means this time around my relationship with exercise might just go the distance.

My Virgin Money Giving Page is at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/emma_bird. Please donate your £1 now.