Darren Ware, ultra running coach

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.

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.

Durability is how I keep the evidence in front of me: your completed training, heart-rate response, training load, late-run efficiency, recovery trends and your own feedback, in one place. I look for repeated patterns and read them alongside terrain, conditions, pacing, fuelling, sleep, pain and life load. No score writes your plan. I do.

One finish in the desert in 2003 is not what qualifies me to coach you. Twenty years of running through every distance from 100 metres to six days, and the habit of reading the evidence before I change anything, are closer to it. The 2027 race is the test I have set myself: the same principles, the same platform, the same rules as my athletes.