Tom Payn Performance Coaching

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Tom Payn Performance Coaching

Evidence-led, athlete-centred coaching for marathon and ultra runners.

Tom Payn Performance Coaching provides individual endurance coaching for marathon and ultra runners worldwide, alongside in person training days, weekends and retreats. Coaching is evidence-led, athlete-centred and built around each runner’s goals, experience and wider life. Led by Tom Payn — MSc Sports Performance Coaching, England Athletics registered coach, England international and two-time Great Britain representative at the Ultra Trail World Championships.

26/10/2026

When runners plan a training week, it is easy to start by filling the calendar.

Intervals on Tuesday.
Tempo on Thursday.
Long run Sunday.
Strength somewhere in the gaps.
Easy miles everywhere else.

A better starting point is:

“What matters most in this phase of training?”

Choose the one or two sessions that do the most important job.

Then protect them.

Put enough recovery around them.
Place the long run sensibly.
Fit strength where it supports rather than disrupts the key work.
Use easy running to connect the week together.

Only then ask whether anything else needs adding.

A good training week is not the week with the most sessions.

It is the week where the important sessions have a clear purpose and you can recover well enough to repeat good training again next week.

This Friday’s TPPC newsletter will go deeper into how to build a training week that actually works in real life.

You can join the mailing list at www.tompayn.com.

21/10/2026

A watch can tell you what happened.

It cannot fully tell you what that training cost you.

Two runners can complete the same session at the same pace and heart rate and experience it very differently.

And the same runner can respond differently to the same session depending on sleep, stress, heat, illness, accumulated fatigue and what came before it.

That is why inside TPPC Club we try to combine objective and subjective information rather than letting one metric dominate the decision.

A useful order is:

PURPOSE → HEALTH → HOW IT FEELS → OBJECTIVE DATA → CONTEXT → DECISION

If everything lines up, great.

If the watch says “ready” but your body is telling you something different, that mismatch is information.

If the numbers look poor but you feel normal and the context explains it, that matters too.

The goal is not to find one perfect metric.

It is to become better at interpreting the whole picture.

That is a big part of supported self-coaching: using data to improve judgement, not replace it.

You can find out more about TPPC Club at www.tompayn.com/tppc-club.

19/10/2026

Running gives us more data than ever.

Pace.
Heart rate.
HRV.
Sleep scores.
Training load.
Recovery scores.

All of that can be useful.

But some of the most useful information still comes from the athlete.

How hard did that session actually feel?
How well did you recover?
Are your legs unusually heavy?
How is your sleep?
Are you carrying a niggle?
How is life stress affecting you?
Do you feel ready to train?

That is not “soft” information.

A systematic review of athlete monitoring research found that subjective self-reported measures of wellbeing often responded to changes in training load more consistently than commonly used objective measures.

That does not mean ignoring the watch.

It means using the numbers alongside the athlete.

When the data and your experience agree, the decision is usually straightforward.

When they disagree, that is often when it is most useful to pay attention.

Good training decisions come from context, not from one number.

This Friday’s TPPC newsletter will look at how to combine objective data with the feedback your body is already giving you.

You can join the mailing list at www.tompayn.com.

14/10/2026

TPPC Club is now live 🎉

Here’s a quick look inside at what the Club actually looks like and some of what’s available to members.

TPPC Club is built for runners who want to take more ownership of their own training, while still having access to good guidance, structured resources, education, Coach Q&A and a community around them.

We still have a few Founding Memberships available at £25/month before the standard membership moves to £35/month.

If you want to have a look at what’s included, head to www.tompayn.com/tppc-club

You plan your training. We help you plan it better.

Learn · Run · Connect

08/10/2026

Not every runner needs a coach looking over their shoulder every day.

But that doesn’t mean you should have to figure everything out alone.

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new way for runners to get more direction, better information and more support while still taking ownership of their own training.

It’s nearly ready.

Monday 12 October.

TPPC Club.

Learn · Run · Connect

www.tompayn.com/tppc-club

05/10/2026

It may not have been long or pretty but after a few weeks of travel and illness it felt great to get back out for a little jog in the forest. Let the consistency building begin!

02/10/2026

My taper check-in starts with the athlete’s experience of the plan.

How are your body and sleep responding? What is on your mind? What has helped before? What demands or support need attention? What shall we agree and review?

These are my coaching prompts, informed by work on tapering experiences [1], collaborative coaching [2], training load [3] and athlete feedback [4]. They are not a validated readiness test.

Today’s newsletter explains this whole-athlete approach in more depth.

My coaching roster is full. If you would like to work together in future, the waiting list is open with no commitment and no guaranteed place or start date.

Join the coaching waiting list: https://www.tompayn.com/coaching-waiting-list?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=20260928_whole_athlete_taper&utm_content=fri_waitlist

Research:
[1] Kirkland A and Moran D (2026). Endurance Runners’ Experiences of the Tapering Process: A Theory-Practice Divide?. Refereed conference abstract, CRiC 2026, pp. 65–66. https://hdl.handle.net/1893/38276

[2] Ritchie D, Allen JB and Kirkland A (2018). Where science meets practice: Olympic coaches’ crafting of the tapering process. DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2017.1362717.

[3] Wang et al. (2023). Effects of tapering on performance in endurance athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282838.

[4] Saw, Main and Gastin (2016). Monitoring the athlete training response: subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: a systematic review. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2015-094758.

30/09/2026

A taper plan has to be usable in the athlete’s actual week.

The training evidence supports reducing volume while retaining appropriate intensity. [3] I also want to hear how the athlete is experiencing that plan. [1,2]

Imagine a changed journey now overlaps a session and leaves the athlete unsettled. My starting point would be a conversation about what has changed, the session’s purpose and the available options. Any change should make sense to the athlete.

This is an illustrative coaching example, not a finding from a trial. Feedback adds context [4]; it does not produce an automatic answer.

Save the questions for your next conversation about tapering.

For the weekly coaching email, sign up at the bottom of this page and confirm by email: https://www.tompayn.com/training-audit?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=20260928_whole_athlete_taper&utm_content=wed_newsletter

Research:
[1] Kirkland A and Moran D (2026). Endurance Runners’ Experiences of the Tapering Process: A Theory-Practice Divide?. Refereed conference abstract, CRiC 2026, pp. 65–66. https://hdl.handle.net/1893/38276
[2] Ritchie D, Allen JB and Kirkland A (2018). Where science meets practice: Olympic coaches’ crafting of the tapering process. DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2017.1362717.
[3] Wang et al. (2023). Effects of tapering on performance in endurance athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282838.
[4] Saw, Main and Gastin (2016). Monitoring the athlete training response: subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: a systematic review. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2015-094758.

28/09/2026

I want a taper to make sense to the whole athlete.

That means discussing physical preparation alongside thoughts, feelings and the circumstances around the race: a biopsychosocial approach.

Kirkland and Moran’s interviews with six elite runners highlighted experience, coping, support and travel. Their refereed conference abstract offers insight, not a tested taper formula. [1]

My practical response is to ask the five questions in this carousel and agree a plan with the athlete. Related journal research describes collaborative tapering practice [2], while training-load evidence [3] and athlete feedback [4] still matter.

What would you want your coach to understand before your next race?

For a wider review of your training, use my free Training Audit: https://www.tompayn.com/training-audit

Research:
[1] Kirkland A and Moran D (2026). Endurance Runners’ Experiences of the Tapering Process: A Theory-Practice Divide?. Refereed conference abstract, CRiC 2026, pp. 65–66. https://hdl.handle.net/1893/38276

[2] Ritchie D, Allen JB and Kirkland A (2018). Where science meets practice: Olympic coaches’ crafting of the tapering process. DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2017.1362717.

[3] Wang et al. (2023). Effects of tapering on performance in endurance athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282838.

[4] Saw, Main and Gastin (2016). Monitoring the athlete training response: subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: a systematic review. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2015-094758.

25/09/2026

A race-specific long run starts with a useful question.

Which demand of your event needs practice now?

If the priority is fuelling, I might keep the route and effort familiar while the athlete practises their intended food and drink. Afterwards, we review what they used, how their gut felt and how the session affected recovery.
That is an illustrative coaching choice, not the exact protocol from a paper. Research on gut training supports rehearsal, but it does not guarantee that one strategy will work for everyone.

My session brief covers purpose, duration and effort, relevant terrain and kit, fuelling, and recovery. I use the athlete's response to decide what comes next.

Save this for your next long-run planning conversation.

At 10:00 UK time today, this week's newsletter goes deeper into what race-specific training means.
My one-to-one coaching is currently full. You can join the waiting list to be considered when a suitable place opens. Joining is free, with no commitment and no guaranteed place or start date. Use the waiting-list link in my bio.

Research: Minetti et al. (2002); Costa et al. (2017); Maunder et al. (2021); Bourdon et al. (2017).

Study links:�
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12183501/�https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28177715/�https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33886100/�https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28463642/

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https://www.tompayn.com/coaching, https://www.tompayn.com/training-audit, https://www.tompayn.com/training-days, https:/

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