What should I do if I can’t run for more than a few minutes?

The best advice I can give is to not worry about what you can and can’t do right now, it’s in your hands to change. With this in mind, I’d generally recommend setting yourself a realistic challenge for a level to be at within 8-10 weeks. It could be running your first 5k without stopping or feeling comfortable enough to go to a parkrun (although parkrun is of course a walk, jog or run).

Interval training may sound a bit much, but actually it’s all that couch to 5k programmes use, another very viable option for you. These can be fantastic as they give you a structure to follow and with some apps using comedians to voice the prompts, it can be quite good fun.

If you can run for 2-3 minutes at a steady rate, then do exactly that. Don’t go to complete failure where you absolutely have to stop. After 2-3 minutes, transition from a run to a walk, again for 2-3 minutes potentially, then run again when you feel recovered. Keep repeating this for a couple of miles.

The best bet will be to extend the time you run for in each interval gradually, keeping the walk length to the same 2-3 minutes. You don’t have to stick with this the whole way through any particular workout though, if you’re doing 5 intervals and can manage 2 of those for the new longer time but need to revert to 2-3 minutes for the last ones, that’s absolutely fine. You’ll still be developing more fitness.

Once you can start running for around 10 minutes at a time before walking, I’d suggest reducing the work time a bit but increasing the speed you run at. This won’t see you running faster overall you’ll cover a bit less distance in the same total exercise time, but one of the big limiting factors you’ll have will be your lactate threshold at this point, so running faster will help to increase this threshold and secure more progress.