Know exactly how hard to train, and when to back off.
A 90-minute live workshop where you’ll learn to read your own training data, manage your training load, and plan your taper with a clear, personalised system built on numbers your watch is already collecting.
Sunday 28th June, 4pm AEST
Register: $47Be honest: do you actually know if your training is working?
You’ve run enough marathons to know what hard work looks like. You do the long runs. You’re consistent in a way most people couldn’t sustain: around a career, a family, a life.
And your times have stopped moving.
You ran almost exactly the same race two years apart, and you can’t explain why. You’ve bought the watch, maybe the power meter, maybe even the lab test. And you’re sitting on a pile of numbers that tell you what happened but never what to do about it.
So you lie awake before the 5am long run wondering: am I training too hard? Not hard enough? Or just… wrong?
And underneath it all there’s the question you don’t say out loud: is this just where I’m at now?
It isn’t. You haven’t peaked. You’re training blind. And those are two very different problems, because one of them can be fixed in 90 minutes.
Imagine knowing, every single week, that your training is working.
A number that tells you, on a Sunday night, whether this week built fitness or just buried you in fatigue. A taper you calculate instead of guess. A start line where you know you’ve done everything right, not hope you have.
I know exactly where my own limits are:
−20
I stop enjoying running
−25
I get sick
−30
I get injured
I didn’t guess those numbers. I looked at the data every time something went wrong, and the pattern was always there.
Your best running is not behind you. It’s just unmeasured.
Here’s what nobody tells experienced runners: the plateau usually isn’t a fitness problem. It’s a visibility problem. You can’t fix what you can’t see. Right now you can’t see whether your easy days are actually easy, whether your big weeks are productive or destructive, or whether you’re arriving at races fresh or flat.
You have numbers like mine. You’ve just never looked. The data already exists in your account: every run you’ve ever done had a training stress attached to it, whether you measured it or not. The workshop teaches you to read it.
The offer
The Smart Load Method™
Tie the numbers to the feelings, so your training becomes repeatable and predictable.
A live 90-minute workshop where I’ll walk you through the exact load-management system I use with every athlete I coach: how to put a number on the cost of every session, how to read your fitness, fatigue and freshness on one chart, how hard each type of run should actually be for you, and how to plan a taper that lands you on race day sharp instead of stale.
It’s not a rule book. It’s a mirror.
You leave with the full system set up on your own data, plus a calculator that keeps running it for you, week after week, race after race.
What runners experience with this approach
“Structure and process were the keys for me. I could see the plan on Training Peaks and it fed straight to my Garmin, which meant for every session, I had a bouncing ball.”
Marty Bowen
“Working with you has given me confidence that I was using my time the best way I could; I wasn’t doing too much, or too little - there was a plan and I didn’t have to second guess myself.”
Liz Mackevicius
“I went from a 3:53 marathoner to a 3:22 marathoner - this gave me the confidence that with Nathan’s guidance my BQ was possible.”
Jodie Backoulas
- ✓ Jodie: 3:53 → 3:22, then her Boston qualifier
- ✓ Marty: PBs at every distance and a BQ in his fifties
- ✓ Sangeeta: a 40-minute marathon PB
- ✓ Liz: from years of repeated injuries to running 6–7 days a week
Inside The Smart Load Method you’ll find:
- → The live 90-minute workshop: the complete framework, taught step by step, with your own data open in front of you
- → Your Personal Load Management Calculator: tracks your fitness, fatigue and freshness automatically, and forecasts forward so you can plan whole blocks with confidence
- → The Taper Planner: set your race date, set your target freshness, and see exactly how much to back off each week. No more two-weeks-because-someone-said-so
- → Session intensity guidelines: finally know whether today’s run is recovery, maintenance or a big stimulus, measured against your current fitness
- → The weekly Load Ratio: a single guardrail number that flags overcooking before it becomes injury, not after
- → The Glossary PDF: every term in plain English, so you’re never nodding along pretending you know what TSB means
Here’s what to expect: six chapters, one system
Chapter 1
Training Stress Score
One number for the true cost of every session, combining how hard and how long. You’ve seen versions of it already (Strava’s Relative Effort, TrainingPeaks’ TSS); now you’ll actually understand what it’s telling you.
Chapter 2
The Performance Management Chart
The centrepiece. Your fitness (CTL) is a 42-day rolling average: the training bank account you’ve built up over months. Your fatigue (ATL) is the 7-day average: your recent spending. Your freshness (TSB) is simply the difference. Three lines, one screen, and suddenly “I feel flat” has a number and a cause.
Chapter 3
Session guidelines
Every session measured against your own fitness. A “recovery run” with a stress score above your fitness level isn’t recovery. It’s more load. This single insight explains years of mystery fatigue for most runners who hear it.
Chapter 4
Weekly load planning
The ratio of recent stress to long-term fitness tells you whether your week was productive (1.0–1.3), maintaining (0.8–1.0), or overcooking it (above 1.3). You’ll know what kind of week you just had, and what kind you need next.
Chapter 5
The taper, personalised
The goal: arrive at the start line with positive freshness, typically +20 to +30, by cutting volume while keeping intensity. You’re not resting; you’re absorbing the training you’ve already done. The calculator shows you exactly where you’ll land on race day.
Chapter 6
Fuelling to match the load
Big-stress days need more fuel: before, during and after. Underfuel them and you amplify the damage beyond what any chart shows. Simple rules to match your plate to your plan.
Also included
The Forward Forecasting Tool
Built into your calculator. Plan an entire block in advance and watch the projected freshness line land exactly where you want it on race day.
The Complete Glossary PDF
Every concept from the workshop, defined simply, for the next time you’re reading your chart at 9pm and blank on what a term means.
100% money-back guarantee
If you feel like the workshop didn’t bring value, get a full refund within 14 days.
“Before joining RunPowerCoach I had a long history of year on year of repeated injuries. … Running to power has allowed us to better manage my training load and I’ve been able to build my running back to 6-7 days. I love the fact that I’m able to get back out there and enjoy running consistently again.”
Liz Reisman
“Having every session sequentially planned for progress that is based on my individual data takes out the training program guess work.”
Paul
Stop second-guessing every session, and start training with evidence
Everything included, one payment:
- ✓ The Smart Load Method live workshop (90 minutes)
- ✓ Personal Load Management Calculator, yours to keep
- ✓ Taper Planner with race-day forecasting
- ✓ Session intensity guidelines
- ✓ The weekly Load Ratio guardrail
- ✓ Complete Glossary PDF
- ✓ 100% money-back guarantee (14 days)
$47. One time. No subscription.
Save my spotEvery unmeasured training block is a block you can’t learn from
Think about what a marathon build costs you: sixteen-plus weeks, hundreds of kilometres, early alarms, family negotiations. If it doesn’t work, you don’t find out until race day. And then you can’t even say why it didn’t work, so the next block starts with the same guesses.
That’s the real price of training blind. Not the bad race: the wasted block behind it, and the identical one in front of you.
And not looking doesn’t make the fatigue go away. It just takes away your ability to do anything about it.
Hi, I’m Nathan, and I was you
At 34 I genuinely believed I was washed up. My times had flatlined, people told me I was past it, and I believed them. I was training on effort and instinct, and the instinct had run out of answers. What changed wasn’t motivation or mileage. It was measurement: putting numbers on what I was already doing, finding my personal limits, and planning around them.
I’m 45 now, still racing, still improving, and I coach competitive marathoners: busy people with real jobs and real families chasing real times, using exactly this system. I know my own limits to the number. By the end of this workshop, you’ll be on the way to knowing yours.
100% money-back guarantee
If you feel like the workshop didn’t bring value, get a full refund. You’ve got 14 days. That’s enough time to attend the workshop, open the calculator, put your own numbers in, and decide for yourself.
The Smart Load Method was built for you if you can’t get through this list without nodding:
- ✓ You’ve run several marathons and a specific time is eating at you: a BQ, sub-3:30, the PB that’s been stuck for two years
- ✓ You’re consistent, but you genuinely don’t know if you’re training correctly
- ✓ You’re time-poor. Every session has to count, because every session costs you something at home
- ✓ You own the gear and the data, but none of it tells you what to do on Tuesday
- ✓ You’ve had an injury or a flat race that “came out of nowhere”
It might not be for you if:
- ✗ You’re chasing your first marathon finish. Come back once you’re chasing a time
- ✗ You want someone to hand you a training plan. This teaches the system behind good plans
- ✗ You’d genuinely rather train by feel alone and accept the surprises
- ✗ You’re looking for a magic workout. There isn’t one, and anyone selling you one is lying
FAQs
Do I need a power meter?
No. The system runs on the stress scores your platform already calculates from pace or power. Power users get slightly sharper data, but nobody is excluded.
Do I need TrainingPeaks?
It’s the easiest place to see the full chart, but Strava has its own version (Fitness & Freshness), and the take-home calculator works with any source of session stress scores.
I’m busy. What’s the ongoing time cost?
Minutes per week. Your platform calculates everything automatically; you check three numbers and make decisions. This saves time. It kills the hours spent second-guessing.
I’m not technical. Will I drown in jargon?
No. Three numbers, plain English, a glossary for everything, and check-ins through the workshop. If you can read a bank balance, you can read a Performance Management Chart. It works the same way.
How much training history do I need?
Around 42 days for a meaningful fitness baseline. If you have less, you’ll start building it immediately and the system sharpens as you go.
Is this a training plan?
No. It’s the layer above the plan: the system that tells you whether any plan is actually working on your body. It makes every plan you ever follow better.
What if I can’t attend live?
No problem. Everyone who signs up gets the replay and all the bonuses (the calculator, the taper planner and the glossary), whether you attend live or not. Live attendance gets you the Q&A.
Will this help with recurring injuries?
That’s exactly who it works best for. Recurring injury is usually a load problem wearing a bad-luck costume. Once you can see your fatigue stacking up, “out of nowhere” stops happening.
Why only $47?
Because it’s a workshop, not coaching. It’s one section of the full RunPowerCoach methodology, taught properly, with the tools to run it yourself. And it’s deliberately priced so the people who need it don’t have to think twice.
Your next injury already has a number on it. So does your next PB.
The next sixteen weeks are happening either way. The long runs will happen, the alarms will go off, the kilometres will accumulate. The only question is whether you’ll be able to see what all that effort is doing, or whether you’ll find out on race day, again. Ninety minutes. $47. A calculator you’ll use for every race after this one. Your best running is still in front of you. Go and measure it.
Join The Smart Load Method: $47