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Despite clearing the hurdle of the dreaded W5R3, I've hit a plateau. I've been struck down by holiday exhaustion and dreadful weather during W6. I can't do the 8 minute run in W6R1 without pausing in the middle to regroup.

This is the second plateau I've hit. The first was in W4/earlyW5, when I couldn't run the full 5 minute runs without a pause in the middle.

I know that the way to deal with a plateau is to keep chipping away at it until it gets moving again. My tactic for dealing with it is to keep repeating the run that's giving me trouble until I clear it before I move on. In this case, I've repeated W6R1 several times. Again, today, I had to pause for a few minutes and walk in the middle, so I'll be repeating it again on Tuesday, and I'll keep doing that until I can do the full run.

Just wondering if anyone else has hit plateaus and if so, how do you deal with them? Do you, like me, just keep repeating until you feel ready to move on? Or do you keep pushing yourself to the next run?

Im exactly the same on the same run, the 20 min run was fine but the two much shorter runs after have been terrible!! I dont geel i can complete the big run at the end of week 6 so i am going to keep re-doing the first two runs if w6 until i can manage them again.

I think mine problem was down to taking time off of exercise over christmas.

It really is different for everyone. I really struggled with week seven, and took a week off from running to sort of recoup and get to a better place (there's a lot going on, I don't get enough sleep EVER, generally feeling overwhelmed and the struggle with week seven didn't help AT ALL). I came back and re-did week seven after my break and was better than ever.

If repeating those runs is what feels right for you, that's great! I wish I had that kind of determination!

Thanks both This morning I finally managed to break the back of W6R1 so it's onwards and upwards!

Haha how random, i made it too yesterday!!