Darren Ware, ultra running coach

As a teenager I competed for my county as a sprinter. I came back to running through marathons, New York and London among them, then moved into ultramarathons. In 2003 I completed the Marathon des Sables.

Those are different demands: the speed of sprinting, the sustained effort of a marathon, the accumulated fatigue of a multi-day ultra. Running has stayed a passion through every one of those chapters.

That background shapes what I pay attention to as a coach. Your race matters, and so do your running history, the time you have, how you recover and what happens when the training gets demanding.

At ULTRALABS I bring running, strength, fuelling, recovery and race preparation together. I review your completed training and your feedback, explain what I'm seeing and adjust the preparation as we go.

My own return to the desert follows the same principles. You work directly with me, and your preparation is built around your experience, your life and your race.

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.