Raise your average.
Transform your standards.
A method built over thirty-two years of running, 1,230 marathons, nineteen Marathon des Sables, and ten Guinness World Records — distilled into a training relationship with Rory for athletes who are ready to commit to a different standard.
Don't build a plan. Build a life that the plan can live inside of.
Most training programmes treat you like an input-output machine. Mine treats you like a human being with a family, a job, an injury history, and a finite number of springs left in your legs.
We will measure things — kilometres, sleep, heart rate variability, nutrition — but the real work is in the small, boring standards you'll hold yourself to on the days no one is watching. Everything else is downstream of that.
— Rory Coleman, Carcassonne
Four pillars hold the method up.
The method rests on four load-bearing columns. Each is non-negotiable. Each is developed in parallel — never one at a time.
- I01
Standards
The quiet daily disciplines that determine whether a race plan survives contact with real life.
- Morning weigh-in, resting HR, sleep quality
- Training debrief on every session — what worked, what hurt
- Weekly reflection call, fortnightly calibration
- II02
Training
A block-periodised plan built around your life first, your event second — revised every week.
- Aerobic base, threshold, and long-day work per block
- Heat, altitude, and pack-weight adaptations for your A-race
- Strength & conditioning mapped to injury history
- III03
Nutrition
Fuelling for the season, the session, and the eight hours you need to feel human afterwards.
- Race-day macro strategy tested on long days, not race day
- Daily fuelling built around when you train, sleep, and eat with people you love
- Practical hydration and electrolyte plan for your target conditions
- IV04
Recovery
The part of training that actually builds you. Done with the same discipline as the work itself.
- Sleep hygiene, stress load, and travel planning
- Deload logic — when to back off, when to push
- Long-horizon joint health and career longevity
Nineteen crossings of the Sahara.
The MdS is our laboratory and our proving ground. The training, nutrition, kit, and mindset we develop there translate to any multi-day, self-supported, or heat-dominant race on Earth.
- Heat chamber programming and real-desert field testing
- Kit list refined over two decades of finishing
- Guidance from first race to podium bid
Photo · Ian CorlessCarcassonne, France. Six AM. The work begins.
Rory Coleman has completed 1,230 marathons and nineteen Marathon des Sables, holds ten Guinness World Records, and has been alcohol-free for nearly three decades. He has coached over a thousand athletes — elite and first-time — through every distance from the London Marathon to the Badwater 135.
He works by application only, from Carcassonne, with a small cohort of athletes at a time. The waiting list for the 2026 Sahara block is currently open.
The 2026 season, in order.
- Apr 2026Marathon des SablesSahara, Morocco
- Jun 2026Comrades MarathonKwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
- Sep 2026SpartathlonAthens → Sparta
- Nov 2026Atacama CrossingAtacama Desert, Chile
If you've read this far, you already know.
The next cohort opens in small numbers only. Share your background, your goal, and the reason the timing is now. I read every application myself and reply within two working days.