How to Choose a Marathon des Sables Coach
You have entered the Marathon des Sables. Now it is real, and you have to prepare. One question then is whether you should prepare for it yourself or whether you should work with a coach. There is no right or wrong answer to this question because it depends on what you prefer. If you do decide to work with a coach, then how do you find one that will be best suited to you? Let’s look at some of the considerations.
Coach or no coach?
Choose a coach if:
You don’t have time to spend on endless hours of kit and food research. Sure, AI can help you here, but it doesn’t have the lived experience and gets fundamental things wrong.
You want the reassurance that someone who has done the race before—and successfully coached people similar to you—will be your trusted advisor and voice of reason when the doubts creep in.
You want your training efforts to be precise and purposeful.
You want to have a safe training progression that you don’t have to second-guess.
You want to know that on the start line, you did everything right and are as fit and prepared as you can be.
You are open to following a training plan and to listening to someone else’s guidance.
You do not want to have to sift through all the noise and misinformation in the online forums.
Choose to do it without a coach if you feel confident in your abilities to devise your own training plan, and you enjoy the challenge of figuring out everything around equipment, clothing, nutrition, blister care, heat acclimation, and travel logistics yourself. For some people, this is the best way.
What to look for in an MDS coach?
There are several coaches to choose from for the MDS. So, how do you get it right? Let’s look at a few factors that may influence your decision.
First, though, you may now be suspicious that this article is a self-serving promotion for my coaching services. After all, I am a coach in this arena and have a vested interest. So while it is true that it would be really stupid of me to state criteria that would disqualify myself as a coach of choice for the MDS, here is what I also truly and genuinely believe:
I believe in abundance over scarcity — there are many coaches and many clients, and that is a good thing. Not every coach is right for every client, and not every client is right for every coach. This is also why you cannot simply sign up and pay on my website. I want us to speak first, to see if we would genuinely work well together. This serves both of us, because I may not actually be the right coach for you. Every coach has their own style, belief system, personality, and method. No coach can be the right coach for every possible client, but they will be the best coach for some of those clients.
Personality Fit
Coaching is a close working relationship. You will be sharing your struggles, your doubts, and your vulnerabilities with this person over several months or more. The fit has to feel right. Read what they write. Watch how they communicate. Do they make you feel seen and understood? Trust your instinct—if something feels off in the first conversation, it probably is. It does not mean that they are a bad coach—they may just not be the right coach for you.
Have they completed the Marathon des Sables?
A coach does absolutely not need to run every ultramarathon on the planet to be able to coach for them. However, I believe that an MDS coach should have done the MDS, because the devil is in the details when it comes to this race. It is very specific, and it is one of the few multi-stage races that has a lean mandatory kit list (meaning you can go very light if you know what you are doing), extremely basic tents (camp life is unforgiving), and a varied course that is both fast, sandy, and technical at once (influencing shoe choice, training ground, and race strategy). I have actually seen a coach selling an MDS training package with just a little experience of dabbling in general in the sand. No specific race experience. Such people will inevitably miss large parts of what MDS coaching entails, and you risk being underprepared or misinformed if you trust them.
Having more than one completion of the MDS is good because after the first time at MDS, you learn a lot, and you can implement and test new strategies.
Finally, the race format changed meaningfully in 2024, so having participated in the race after this date is recommended. If someone did the event only once 10 years ago, their knowledge is no longer up to date. Going back once in a while is like continuous education. You invest in your own development as a coach and athlete, so that your knowledge stays current and you can better serve your clients.
What else have they done?
Race experience beyond the Marathon des Sables can be valuable too. It means that they have built their expertise from a variety of environments, cultures, and challenges. Preparing for the MDS is not so much about the schedule in TrainingPeaks, or what pace you hit on your Wednesday morning Lactate Threshold session, as it is about gaining confidence, tackling self-limiting beliefs, building robustness and resilience, and receiving support when obstacles in life get in the way.
A range of experiences also demonstrates an open mind to new challenges, a willingness to apply new perspectives to oneself and the world, and, very importantly, a willingness to invest in oneself to grow as a human and a coach.
Formal qualifications are a quality stamp that they have the basics right in terms of being able to safely construct a plan. It is a piece of the puzzle, and complements the experience. It can never entirely replace the experience of the event itself.
What is their approach?
Learn about how they coach. Read what they write, listen to what they say about their approach. Coaches coach differently. Some may say there is no one-size-fits-all. Others may say “it’s my way or the highway”. What resonates? Do you want really high mileage, or do you want an approach that is more nuanced? Do you want a whip or a carrot? Do you want to be told what to do or participate in the planning? What do you think you would respond to best? How does that match the approach of the coach you have in mind?
How much support do they offer you? If communication is mainly e-mail-based, chances are you will not get all your questions answered, or that important communication will be missed entirely.
What is their track record of coaching people for the MDS?
Have they coached people before for the MDS? How did those people do? What do previous clients say about their experience? Have they coached people like you? People who share your age, your gender, your circumstances, your physical ability, your event goals?
What is the cost?
Budget is a real consideration for most people. While your budget may influence what coach you end up with, you are not paying for their time. You are paying for:
Achieving a result
Fulfilling a dream
Profound transformation that has the potential to reshape your life and how you see yourself
Think about this carefully. What a coach charges for their MDS coaching doesn’t necessarily impact the quality of guidance you will get as long as the other criteria are fulfilled, but here is a consideration:
Some coaches have more premium rates, others have low rates. A coach who promises you that they will reply to your messages on WhatsApp 24/7 while charging a low monthly fee signals that they have low confidence and that they are desperate to coach people. At least one of two things will be true: 1) they cannot possibly live off of their coaching, so it is a side hustle, and they spend most of their time doing something else; or 2) they can live off of coaching, but it is because they have a really big roster of clients. That means they cannot give you the personal attention you deserve. For a race where mindset and confidence are crucial success factors, do you want to be coached by someone who does not even believe in their own coaching? Or, if it is important for you to feel seen, encouraged, and supported, do you want a coach who will forget your name between calls?
Choosing a coach for the MDS is not a small decision. You are about to invest months of your life, significant money, and a great deal of yourself in this preparation. The right coach will make that investment worthwhile. The wrong coach might cost you more than you think. But who is the right coach for you is something you have to figure out yourself.
If my philosophy resonates with you, let’s talk.