Your breathing intensifies, it’s all you can hear. It’s even drowning out your footsteps

The saliva in your mouth is starting to increase. you begin to feel a little bit sick.

How long’s left? Ah, still two minutes to go.

You try to relax but you can feel your jaw getting tighter.

Focus on your form, knees up, drive.

How long’s left? Ah, 1 minute 30 to go.

This is getting really tough.

Keep pushing and hold on.

Yup, it was a 6-minute assessment day on my TrainAsOne plan.

Nearly one month after the first one, how did things go?

Well, let’s rewind back to the 31st of August and the end of the first month of training.

A very similar experience of feeling giving it as much as possible to see where things are. That time I completed the 6-minute time trial with an average pace of 4:36/km.

This time, another four weeks on, there’s been a substantial improvement. I managed to complete the 6-minutes with an average pace of 4:13/km.

I know it was from a low base level of fitness but I’m really happy with that progress. It feels like there’s a lot to come because whilst the training has become a lot more consistent over the last few months runs are still short.

With the weekday runs being limited to 30 minutes at the moment with child care, there’s a real limit to the number of kilometres that can be covered in the week.

There’s no rush to increase the number of runs, nor the volume at the moment though. This is all about taking time to get used to running. Not jumping in all guns blazing and doing too much too quickly like previously. I still want to though and that’s why I’m glad I’ve got TrainAsOne tempering that.

With the inclusion of plenty of very short easy runs to allow for rest and recovery. Hopefully, that results in building strength and resilience before the volume starts to increase next year ahead of Warsaw.

For now, the focus is on three weeks’ time and the first race of the winter season at City Trail Lublin.

Consistency is the name of the game!