It gets a lot easier with a podcast. I went with the NHS ones, which mix inoffensively encouraging music with a guide who tells you when you to stop and start running and occasionally lets you know that you’re Doing Really Well!, which might sound annoying but is oddly quite nice.

And it was easy.

Not easy in the sense that it didn’t involve effort, or that I wasn’t glad that the schedule finished when it did, but definitely easy in the sense that it was absolutely doable, without pain or total exhaustion or even getting hugely out of breath. Sixty seconds isn’t a long time; by the point you’ve really registered that you’re running, it’s almost time to walk again. So what if I needed a couple of minutes to get my breath back at the end, or I thought dark and evil thoughts when I realised that the last run on this route would once again be up a hill, or my legs ached like achy things the next day? It was very, very doable, and it’s a great feeling to realise that something is well within your ability. Even when the something is yet another hill.