Stuart Sahan
Endurance Running Coach & Clinical Sports Therapist
Effective coaching is about more than completing the sessions on a training plan. It’s about understanding why you’re doing them, how your body is responding, and knowing when to progress, when to adapt and when to hold back. My job as a coach is to bring those pieces together and help you train with greater purpose, consistency and confidence.
That starts with understanding you as a runner. Your experience, goals, training history and the life that has to fit around your running all matter. I combine endurance coaching with my background in sports therapy and running biomechanics to build training around the individual, rather than expecting the individual to fit the plan.
How I Got Here
Running and athletics have been part of my life for much longer than Run Fit Coach. At school, athletics was the sport I naturally gravitated towards, taking part in sprinting, relay, long jump and javelin. I could hold my own too. It's probably a good job, as I was never much good at football!
But like it does for many people, life moved on. Exams, work and eventually family life became the priority, and running and athletics gradually disappeared into the background.
It wasn't until much later that I found my way back to it. Over 12 years ago, I started running again for fairly simple reasons. I wanted to lose a bit of weight, get fitter and meet people. I certainly wasn't thinking about becoming a running coach. What started as getting out for a run developed into 5Ks, longer distances and eventually marathons.
Along the way I became increasingly interested in the training behind running and why we all respond and move so differently. That curiosity eventually led me from being a runner to becoming a Run Leader, qualifying in Personal Training and becoming involved in supporting other runners, including as an England Athletics Guide Runner.
I went on to complete a First Class Honours degree in Sport & Exercise Therapy at Coventry University and further develop my coaching through the England Athletics Event Group Endurance qualification. Sports Therapy One and Run Fit Coach have both grown out of that journey, bringing together different parts of my experience in healthcare, sports therapy, running and coaching.
How I Coach
I've spent more than 20 years working in healthcare, and that's probably influenced the way I coach just as much as any course or qualification I've completed. Working with people teaches you to listen, because two people with similar goals can have completely different circumstances, concerns and needs. Running is no different.
I want to understand where you are now, what you're trying to achieve and how running fits around the rest of your life. From there, training can be built around you rather than forcing you into somebody else's system.
I use pace, heart rate, RPE and training data where they add useful information, but numbers never tell the whole story. How you're responding to training, recovering and feeling matters too.
Coaching Runners in the Real World
My coaching includes online coaching, one-to-one sessions, group running and practical track sessions. That means working with runners at different stages, from people building towards their first events to experienced runners looking for more structure, better performance or a different approach to their training.
Working with runners of different abilities has reinforced something I strongly believe: good coaching isn't about making everybody train the same way. It's about understanding where somebody is now, where they want to get to and finding an appropriate way of bridging that gap.
Experience in Sports Therapy
Alongside Run Fit Coach, I work as a Clinical Sports Therapist at Sports Therapy One in Kenilworth, working with people from a wide range of sporting and non-sporting backgrounds.
My Sports Therapy experience has also included working within team sport. The photograph here is from my time with Nuneaton Old Eds, where I worked with rugby players around injury assessment, treatment, rehabilitation and return to play.
That side of my work has given me a different perspective on running and coaching. It has taught me to look beyond a single exercise, movement or number and consider the wider picture. It's also one of the reasons I've developed such an interest in running biomechanics: understanding how somebody moves and what may actually be relevant to them, rather than trying to make every runner look the same.
My Proudest Running Moment
Of all the races and events I've taken part in, the 2017 London Marathon is the one I'm most proud of. I ran it in memory of my mum, Lesley, who had sadly passed away just a few months earlier, while raising money for Myton Hospice.
That day reminded me that running can mean far more than pace, PBs and finishing times. It can give us something to work towards, bring people together, raise money for causes that matter and sometimes provide something positive during a very difficult period in our lives.
It's something I try to remember when coaching other people too. Everyone has their own reason for running, and understanding that reason can be every bit as important as understanding their training.
The Closest I Ever Got to the Barkley Marathons
If you've ever watched The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, you'll probably recognise Laz Lake, creator of one of the most notoriously difficult endurance events in the world. This was my chance to meet him at the National Running Show in Birmingham. And, for the avoidance of doubt, meeting Laz is about as close to the Barkley Marathons as I'm likely to get!
Working With Me
I take running seriously, but I don't believe running coaching needs to feel elitist or unnecessarily complicated. I've been the schoolboy who enjoyed athletics, the adult whose running disappeared while other parts of life took priority, the person trying to get fitter, the runner chasing his own goals and the person standing on a marathon start line for a reason that had very little to do with a finishing time.
Those experiences are part of the way I coach today. If we work together, I'll want to understand more than your latest race time. I'll want to know where you've come from, what you're trying to achieve, how training fits into your life and what you want to get from your running. Then we can build from there.
No elitism, just real-world coaching for real-world results!
If that sounds like the sort of coaching you're looking for, get in touch and tell me a little about you.
Get in Touch