Private ultra coaching for runners aged 40 and over. It combines aerobic control, muscular durability, strength, race specificity, fuelling and heat preparation, and recovery and load management. A training platform reads what you actually completed; it organises the evidence and proposes options, and I decide what changes.

Is it only for the Marathon des Sables?

No. Durability is built for ultramarathons, mountain races, multi-day events, desert races and long endurance challenges. The MdS is the founder's proving ground in 2027, not the programme.

Who makes the decisions?

I do. The platform reads your watch data, heart-rate discipline, late-run efficiency, training load and recovery, organises the evidence and proposes options. Every change to your training is mine, and I approve it before you see it. No score writes your plan or decides whether you are ready.

What data do you need?

A Garmin or Coros watch synced through Intervals.icu. Heart rate on easy runs matters most. Runs without the watch can be added by hand.

£395 a calendar month, for an initial three-month block: £1,185 in total if you complete it, paid as three monthly instalments on dates written into your agreement. Nothing is charged until we have agreed your start date and you have the written agreement.

Is three months enough to get me to an ultra?

Three months is the initial coaching commitment, not a promise. How long the build takes, and which event makes sense, depend on where you start and how you progress. Support beyond the first block continues only under an active coaching agreement.

What is the 30-day mutual-fit period?

During the first 30 coaching days, counted from your agreed start date, either of us can end the remaining commitment. You give notice by email to coach@darrenware.com. Coaching already delivered is not refunded automatically. This is a voluntary fit period and is separate from your statutory cancellation rights, which the agreement sets out.

Is 40 too old to start ultra running?

No. Peak ultra performance sits in the late thirties to mid forties and strong results continue past 50. Training age and consistency matter more than birth year. A new runner at 42 needs a longer base than a 52 year old with 25 years of running.

How does ultra training change after 40?

Keep the aerobic volume you can sustain, keep one hard session a week, make everything else easy, lift twice a week, eat more protein, sleep more, and leave more room between demanding days. Do not simply train less.

What is the safest way to build long runs?

Keep the planned long run at or under about 110% of the longest run you completed in the last 30 days. In a 2025 study of 5,205 runners, single-run jumps beyond that carried substantially higher injury risk, while weekly mileage ratios did not predict injury. Durability holds this guardrail in every proposal.

Do you coach mountain ultras, 100 milers and desert stage races?

Yes. Durability prepares runners for trail and mountain ultras, 100 km and 100 mile races, desert and multi-day stage races and long endurance challenges. The plan is built around the demands of your race: terrain, climbing, duration, pack and conditions.

How is this different from an AI training app?

Durability is not an AI pretending to know everything about you. The platform reads your completed training and proposes the next two weeks; I read the proposal, edit it, and approve it before you see it. Data informs the decision. A coach makes it.

What happens if I miss training?

The plan adapts. Missed training is never repaid with a bigger week, completing more than planned is not rewarded with a jump, and a lost week becomes a conservative restart rather than a penalty.

An ultra runner climbing a mountain trail at sunrise above the clouds, the working leg muscles glowing

An ultra runner climbing a dark rocky slope at dusk, the working leg muscles glowing

Build legs that last.

Private ultra coaching for runners 40+.

I manage your preparation from where you are now to race day: running, strength, fuelling, recovery, terrain, heat and the changes needed when training or life does not go to plan.

Your training data gives me a clearer picture of how you are responding. It informs the decision. I make it.

Apply for private coaching See exactly what is included →

One coach: Every decision made by me, not a template
Private 1:1: Your plan, your data, your race
Weekly review: Written, on every completed week
Built around your race: Terrain, duration, conditions

Darren Ware, ultra running coach, in a muddy running vest against a black background

Darren Ware, founder and coach

A lifetime of running.
A personal approach to coaching.

I’ve been running since I was ten. As a teenager, I competed for my county as a sprinter. Later came marathons, including New York and London, followed by ultramarathons. In 2003, I completed the Marathon des Sables. In 2027, aged 52, I’m going back.

That background shapes how I coach, but your preparation starts with you: your running experience, your race and the time you have to train.

I bring your running, strength work, fuelling, recovery and race preparation into one plan. I review your completed sessions alongside your feedback, explain the adjustments and make changes when needed. How you feel matters as much as the numbers on your watch.

You work directly with me throughout. We’ll look at how you’re handling the training, what needs attention and how to fit the work around the rest of your life.

What you are buying

I manage your entire preparation.
The running plan is one part of it.

Each week I read what you completed, how you responded and what your next race demands, and I decide what changes.

Running, strength, fuelling, recovery, terrain, heat and race execution are one job, not six. Handling them separately is how athletes arrive fit and still fall apart at hour four.

You are hiring my judgement. The software is how I keep the evidence in front of me.

What private coaching includes

Coaching, not a PDF.

Your check-in takes a few minutes. My review does not.

How often

I review every completed week. Your next two weeks remain visible, but I adjust the training whenever your response, recovery, schedule or race preparation requires it.

Scope

I provide running coaching, not injury diagnosis or rehabilitation. If pain or a medical concern needs assessment, I will ask you to seek advice from an appropriate qualified professional before we continue the relevant training.

01A 90-minute onboarding and complete review of training, racing, injury history, available time and target event
02A race-specific preparation strategy
03Individually prescribed running and strength training
04A written coach assessment every week
05Training adjusted whenever the evidence or your response warrants it
06A scheduled coach call at least every fortnight
07Direct messaging with responses within one working day
08Long-run progression and durability review
09Fuelling, hydration and gut-training strategy
10Terrain, climbing, descending, pack and heat preparation
11A complete pre-race execution plan
12Post-race analysis

Who I coach

Runners training for ultras, long trail races, stage races or a major endurance challenge.
Runners whose legs fade before their cardiovascular system does.
Runners 40+ who want structure without being chained to a generic plan.
Runners who want strength, fuelling and race preparation integrated into the running.
Runners who want to understand why they're doing the training.
And runners prepared to train consistently rather than chase shortcuts.

Who I don't coach

Anyone looking only for a standalone training plan.
Anyone who wants a training file and no conversation.
Anyone who needs injury rehabilitation, a diagnosis or medical clearance before ordinary training. An old, assessed injury does not rule you out.
Anyone chasing a result in eight weeks. Event choice and preparation time depend on where you start.

Coaching

Private coaching

£395/ calendar month

Initial three-month block · £1,185 in total · Private 1:1

I manage your entire preparation. The running plan is one part of it.

Private 1:1 coaching at £395 a calendar month for an initial three-month block: £1,185 in total if you complete it.

Three months is the initial coaching commitment. It is not a promise to get you to an ultra in three months: which event, and how long the build takes, depend on where you start and how you progress. Coaching beyond the first block continues only under an active coaching agreement.

Three-month initial block: Three monthly payments of £395, on dates written into your agreement before anything is charged. No setup fee, and nothing charged for a fourth month inside the initial block.
30-day mutual fit: During the first 30 coaching days, counted from your agreed start date, either of us can end the remaining commitment. You give notice by email to coach@darrenware.com. Coaching already delivered is not refunded automatically. This is separate from your statutory cancellation rights, which your agreement sets out.
One coach, no hand-offs: I read your data, write your weekly review and make every change to your plan myself. Nothing is delegated.
Start dates agreed individually: There is no shared start date or deadline. Each athlete's start date, onboarding and payment dates are agreed one to one, and written down before payment.

See everything that is included →

I keep the roster small enough to coach the person behind the data.

No generic plan, no monthly spreadsheet, no four-week wait for the next review.

Your preparation changes when you do.

Apply for private coaching

Every application reviewed personally by me.

How your training data supports the decision

Your training shows me
what needs attention.

Your race gives us the destination. Your training history gives us the starting point.

From there, every run you complete builds the picture I coach from: not what a spreadsheet says you should be doing, but what you are actually doing.

LoadTraining load and volume.: How much you are absorbing week on week, and whether the long run is building from what you have actually run.
ResponseHeart-rate response and fatigue.: Whether easy running is staying genuinely easy, and how your body is responding to the work.
DurabilityPatterns in how pace and effort change during longer runs.: How pace and heart rate move together late in a long run, when that relationship changes, and how quickly.
RecoveryRecovery and progression.: Resting heart rate, HRV and sleep against your own baseline, so progression is earned, not scheduled.

When there isn't enough data, I don't pretend there is.

New athletes start conservatively.

As your training history builds, I learn more about your volume, consistency, long-run tolerance and response to training.

More evidence. Better decisions.

What the numbers are for

Your data is evidence, not a verdict.

Durability brings together the training you completed, heart-rate response, training load, late-run efficiency, recovery trends and your own feedback.

I look for repeated patterns across multiple sessions and interpret them alongside terrain, conditions, pacing, fuelling, sleep, pain and life load.

Your data helps me understand your training. I review it alongside your feedback and decide how to adjust your plan. Coaching does not diagnose injuries or provide medical clearance.

Durability is well supported as a concept in endurance research. Which field marker and which threshold reliably represent physiological deterioration is still unsettled, so the thresholds in the app are coaching conventions and are labelled as such.

The real limiters

I train what happens after
"fit enough".

Many runners are aerobically fit enough. What lets them down is the ability to keep producing: pace and output that deteriorate late in long runs and races, while the heart rate says everything is fine.

Hours into an event, performance can start disappearing for very different reasons.

Fitness gets you to the start. How you hold together under fatigue helps decide what happens next.

EarlyEverything is working; effort and movement remain controlled.
As fatigue buildsMuscular force and economy can begin to change.
Deep into the eventTissue tolerance, fuelling and pacing become increasingly important.
Late raceThe combined effect of preparation and execution becomes visible.

Muscular fatigue: Your cardiovascular system can still feel capable while your legs lose the ability to produce force.
Tissue tolerance: Feet, calves, quads, tendons and connective tissue have to tolerate thousands of repeated impacts.
Fuelling: You need to absorb carbohydrate and fluid for hours, not just know what you should eat.
Heat and environment: Temperature, terrain, altitude, weather and equipment can completely change the demand of an event.
Pacing: A race can be compromised hours before you realise you've gone too hard.

How I coach you

Measure. Understand.
Adjust. Repeat.

01 / Assessment
We start with your race, your training history and where your performance currently breaks down. I read your data before I write a single session.
Assessed
This week
Held
HR cap discipline
0 of 2
easy runs breached 126 bpm
To review
Late-run efficiency
6.3%
changed on 27 Aug long run
Steady
Recovery
steady
RHR 55.4 · HRV 42 · sleep 7.4 h
Synced
Last week
47
km synced · Mon to Sun
What this week means
02 / Plan
I build your training around your life: your days, your long-run history, your strength work, your race.
Approved
This week · 31 Aug 2026Open
MonEasy run8 km
TueStrength (heavy lower)·
WedEasy run10 km
ThuEasy run9 km
FriStrength (upper/core)·
SatRest
SunLong run20 km
Drag a session to another day, or use the arrows. Days swap. Distances and session types stay as planned.
03 / Monitor
Your watch syncs, I read the response: load, heart-rate discipline, late-run fade, recovery. Every week.
Reviewed
Durability
Pattern forming3 comparable runs
2h 10m to 2h 30m
Across your last 3 comparable long runs, efficiency has started to fall away somewhere in this window. Latest run shown below.
Latest: 25.7 km in 3h 46m on 27 Aug 2026 · one run on its own is not a trend
Comparable runs
3
used for this range
Terrain
299 m up
296 m down
Read as a pattern across comparable runs, never off one. Terrain, conditions, pacing, fuelling and sleep all move this, so Darren reads it alongside them and decides.
How Durability works
04 / Adjust
When the evidence says change, I change the training. Miss a week and it adapts; progress faster and it responds. The objective is simple:
Arrive at race day able to keep producing when everybody else is starting to fade.
Adjusted
Next week · 7 Sept 2026 · 49 kmProvisional
MonStrength (upper/core)·
TueEasy run10 km
WedStrength (heavy lower)·
ThuAerobic run13 km
FriRest
SatRest
SunLong run26 km
Your recent training supports a small step up: 49 km this week. Long run 26 km. The long run builds from what you have run recently.

Training doesn't happen in a laboratory.

You miss sessions.
Work gets busy.
You travel.
You get tired.
Sometimes training goes better than expected.

A fixed 16-week PDF doesn't know any of that.

I do.

The goal isn't to constantly rewrite your programme.

It's to make sensible changes when the evidence says a change is needed.

What gets trained

Build the complete ultra runner.

Aerobic control

Build the aerobic capacity to keep easy running genuinely easy and sustainable.

Muscular durability

Develop the ability to maintain movement quality and output as fatigue accumulates.

Strength

Build stronger legs and improve your ability to tolerate repeated loading.

Race specificity

Prepare for the terrain, climbing, descending, duration, pack and conditions you will actually face.

Fuel and heat

Practise carbohydrate intake, hydration, sodium strategy and environmental preparation before race day.

Recovery and load

Progress training without continually digging a hole you can't recover from.

The objective isn't one heroic training week. It's months of repeatable work.

Understand what changes as fatigue accumulates

What actually fades
when the miles build up.

Slide the gradient. The load moves: quads take the braking on descents, glutes and calves drive the climbs. This is the physiology behind the fade, and it is trainable. I train all of it, because your race has all of it.

Muscle load while running on a steep descent

Muscle load while running on a gentle descent

Muscle load while running on a gentle climb

FLAT · 0%

MUSCLE LOAD

PRIMARYSECONDARYSTABILISING

CALVES70

GLUTE MAX61

QUADRICEPS60

HAMSTRINGS58

TIBIALIS ANTERIOR40

HIP FLEXORS38

Flat0% GRADE

Mid stanceSTRIDE PHASE

LOAD FOCUS BALANCED

Everything shares the work: calves and hamstrings drive, glutes stabilise. The ground where easy volume gets built.

Relative activation pattern drawn from EMG research on graded running (uphill: vastus group +23%, soleus +14% at a 10% grade; downhill: eccentric quadriceps braking). An illustration of the pattern, not a measurement of you. ECC marks eccentric, lengthening-under-load work.

Coached by Darren Ware

Training is only one part of endurance performance.

Durability is the coaching and training system I built around one question: what helps endurance athletes keep moving for longer.

Training
Fuelling
Hydration
Heat
Recovery
Testing

The same principle applies to everything I build:

Solve the problem first.
Test it in the real world.

Apply for private coaching