You’re training around a full-time job, a family and a body that doesn’t recover the way it did at 25. You’re not a beginner, but you’re not elite either. You want to get genuinely faster, and you want advice that respects the evidence and your diary in equal measure.
That’s the runner Coach the Run was built for.
Everything we publish is grounded in two things:
Mike’s five decades in the sport and Stu’s own journey from a 3:33 marathon to a sub-3.
Most of our readers are between 35 and 60.
Some are coming back to running after years away. Some are chasing a marathon PB they’ve been told is out of reach. Almost all of them are fitting training around work, family and everything else.
What they have in common is that they’re serious about improving but short on time, and tired of advice written for 22-year-olds with empty calendars.
Our training plans, coaching and articles start from the life you actually have.
Bringing together two very different perspectives on running; an elite UK champion winner (Mike) and a midlife parent struggling to fulfil his desire to run everyday (Stu), we have created a definitive resource on running, with quality content and emphasis on wellbeing at its core.
Mike won the 1983 London Marathon in 2:09:43 and took bronze in the marathon at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. He started running in 1968, won an English Schools title over 5,000m and trained alongside Steve Ovett during his college years.
He’s been coaching since 1984, running training camps in Portugal for nearly four decades, coaching GB internationals and serving as coaching editor for Runner’s World magazine in the 1990s. Mike is a UK-qualified running coach and has spent much of the last decade focused on runners over 40, with many runners targeting Good For Age Qualification.
Stu ran his first marathon in Paris in 2012 and finished in 3:31. Twelve years and eight marathons later, he crossed the line at Goodwood in 2:59. Nothing about that progression was talent. It was structure, patience and a lot of getting it wrong first.
His nine marathons to date: Paris, Brighton, London, Manchester, Goodwood, Abingdon (twice) and the Pilgrim’s Marathon (twice). He still has his eye on completing the World Marathon Majors one day.
Stu runs the site day to day and writes about the unglamorous reality of training around work and a busy family, including everything that went wrong on the way to sub-3.
Wellbeing matters as much as the watch. Running should add to your life, not consume it. We write about mental health, recovery and longevity with the same care we give to pace.
Led by our readers. Our Ask the Coach series exists because readers send Mike real questions. If something’s confusing you, it’s probably confusing someone else, too.
Honest recommendations. If we link to a product, it’s because we’d buy it ourselves. Some links earn us a small commission, which keeps the site running and never changes our verdict.
Want Mike’s eyes on your own training?
Articles can take you a long way, but at some point a plan written for everyone stops being a plan written for you. Run Your Best Race is Mike’s 1:1 coaching programme, built for exactly the runners we write for: ambitious, busy and ready to train properly.
We’re here to make sure you’re up-to-date with the latest running tips, events and product discounts – we’ve always got your back! Rest assured, we value your privacy and would never dream of selling your address.
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