Hands up if you’ve ever entered a race, printed off a training plan, stuck it up on your wall and diligently ticked off all your runs in the first two weeks, only to find your motivation to train missing in action by week three or four. Yep, guilty as charged.

I remember jumping out of bed the first day of training for my first marathon and ticking off a three mile run before I’d even woken up properly. That’s how motivated I was.

But those levels of motivation are difficult to sustain for a whole training cycle, and it’s normal to not feel the love for it some weeks. One of the biggest questions I get asked by runners is how to find your running mojo when it’s wandered off in the middle of training.

The common answers people give to this question are along the lines of: forget training and go out and run for fun; leave your watch at home; just go for a short run; buy some new kit. Although these will probably work to get you out the door today and tomorrow, they don’t address the issue of why your motivation disappeared in the first place.

Usually you can identify what has caused your running mojo to do one. Sometimes it’s burnout from too much running, other times it’s down to getting caught up in entering a race because you thought you should and didn’t stop to think if you really wanted to, and often it’s the fault of your training plan.

Did you jump into training for your next race before you’d fully recovered from your last one? Burnout. Are you training for a goal that’s a bit too lofty for you right now? Burnout. Are you doing a lot of other stuff (work, other exercise, moving house, any other stress) on top of your training? Burnout.

Sometimes you just need a rest from training and racing, so take it. Be realistic about what you can do right now. You can’t do all the things, all the time.

Why did you enter this race? Is it because your friends were all entering it and you had racing FOMO? Is it because you did a half marathon and then thought you SHOULD do a marathon. These aren’t big enough motivators to keep you interested in training for 16 weeks. It’s no surprise that your motivation has taken a hike.

Before you can find your motivation you need to know where it comes from. What excited you about running? What do you want to achieve? Why are you doing it? Find what fires you up and really gets you excited to put your trainers on and you’ll keep putting them on.

If you’re training for a race that you really want to do and you’re not burnt out, I’d put money (well 50p) on the fact that your training plan is what’s making you unmotivated to train. If it started with mileage or intensity that is too high for you, the first couple of weeks might have been ok but by week three or four you might be struggling to meet the paces or mileage. This can make you feel unnecessarily down on yourself, which in turn will make you less motivated to train.

Another common flaw with training plans is not enough variety. I don’t eat the same thing for dinner week in, week out, because I’d be bored stiff. It’s the same with training. You need a bit of variety to keep you interested – this can be as simple as doing 400m reps this week and 600m reps another week (adapting the number of reps and the pacing accordingly) or doing hill reps instead of speedwork one week.

So before you start training for your next race, think about why you’re doing it, whether you’re recovered from your last one and plan your training carefully. Then hopefully, you’ll make it to the end of your training plan as keen as you were on that first day.

More tips on planning your training.