Today I went out for a five mile run. I headed to Finsbury Park and ran a few laps. After my first lap I pushed the pace a little – nothing too fast, just a comfortably hard effort up the hills and keeping the foot on the gas down the other side.

When I got home I uploaded my run and had a look at the pace. A lap of Finsbury Park (which is just under 1.5 miles and has two ups and two downs per lap) had taken me 11 mins. While back in September, when I was running 6x laps (with a 90 second rest) I’d do laps in 10 mins in between.

September was the peak of my autumn marathon training. The race didn’t go to plan, but I’m pretty confident that at that point I was in shape to run a 3:30 marathon and if not, pretty darn close to it. So it’s tempting to look at the numbers on today’s run and feel that that sort of fitness is a long way off.

It’s January. London marathon is just under 16 weeks away. I have five runners starting plans I’ve written for them for London this week. They’ve told me their goals and what they want to achieve, and when they do those first few marathon paced miles, the chances are – 26.2 miles at that pace is going to feel a long way off.

But you don’t run your marathon in January, you run it in April, or May or whenever it may be. You run it at the end of your training plan. If your marathon pace was easy and sustainable for 10 miles plus at this stage, your goal is off. Trust the process, trust the training and focus on each run in front of you. Don’t try to do too much, too fast at this stage. There’s still a long way to go.

As for my run – I’m training for South Downs Way 50 in April, so a marathon that month is off the cards. But it would be nice to think that before then I could get back to those 4 x 10 minute laps of the park by then.