Hands up if recently, your running regimen has gone out of the window. Mine certainly has. After years of waking up to run before work, I’ve barely been able to drag myself out of bed at 7.30am to go for a walk, let alone an 8K canter. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m kind of… meh about training. I think I’ve got runners’ burnout.

General burnout tends to be the end result of months of stress and overwork, and the running equivalent is kind of the same. Sure, we might not need to be signed off from work or find that we can’t get out of bed at all, but the cause is similar: prioritising rise and grind over rest and relaxation.

I’ve been running for years, and normally, training naturally ebbs and flows. You go through periods when you just don’t have time to run, or you go on holiday where swimming and sightseeing take priority. But over the past couple of years, many of us haven’t had a proper stint off from work or been able to get away – and so have maintained our usual training habits. I’ve swung from training plan to training plan, feeling less enthusiastic and more fatigued each month.

Do you have runners’ burnout? 6 red flags to watch out before heading on a run