Most people have been training all winter for the London marathon and next month’s Breakfast run in Kingston will be an important milestone for them.

The 16-mile race on March 23 is used by hundreds as a benchmark to see how well the winter months have passed with less than a month until the big day.

Others use the shorter eight-mile course to test how well their new year’s resolution to get fitter and healthier in 2014 is coming along – which is where I come in.

Sadly for me the resolution has not gone quite according to plan and training has started a little later than I had intended and I now have a month to get somewhere close to fit.

Fortunately, the Bushy Park parkrun has kept me ticking over in the early weeks of the year and the boggy conditions in Hampton will certainly make pounding the streets of Kingston seem like a walk in the park.

But having set out on a 10km jog around Teddington and Twickenham at the weekend, I think I could be caught short – in the same way I was forced to make an unscheduled stop midway through.

Time to book in a one week intensive training camp – also known as a holiday.

It is not that I do not think I’ll complete the run, but I do need to get used to the monotony of pounding out the miles. The boredom is my biggest concern.

I’ve always been one for team sports. Give me a ball and I’ll play for hours, but the loneliness of the long distance runner has never appealed.

I’m just hoping the Breakfast Run runners are a friendly bunch and we’ll all talk each other through it.