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Former international athlete, Dave Tune, maybe best known as one of the country’s top endurance runners in the 1990’s, earning 14 GB vests and a wealth of world class PBs spanning a decade of stunning performances.

He has now carved out a reputation as one of the nation’s top running coaches, drawing on his decades of experience of training hard but smart to help athletes of all abilities to fulfil their potential, boasting a 97% PB success rate for all those who follow his core principles.

Those core principles in Dave’s coaching schedules focus around training to individual heart rate zones - set up from lactate threshold tests completed on a treadmill at the clinic - and it is this method that he implemented in his own running that helped him reach the pinnacle of athletics achievements.

Dave first started using heart rate training at the tender age of 16, after thoroughly researching the subject, understanding the principles and the science behind the theory, and seeing how it was working in practice for other top athletes.

Experience has confirmed in Dave’s mind that it was the best way to improve fitness and speed without overdoing it, thus helping to avoid illness and injury.

The 45-year-old Doncaster coach is very aware now of the importance of taking a holistic approach to his athletes’ training schedules - taking into account a person’s diet, work, stress and sleep, for example - but the effect of a runner’s lifestyle on their performance wasn’t acknowledged as readily when he was competing.

“I think I could have been even better if my diet had been less carbohydrate-heavy, and if I’d done more core stability and cross-training, but I did keep a daily hand-written training diary, which helped me spot patterns occurring when my running was going well, or was suffering, and learnt from that to help myself improve”, he explained.

His PBs speak volumes as to how much he did improve: 5m - 23.09, 10km - 29.03, 10m - 47:43, 13.1m - 63:11, these are just some of his phenomenal performances from his impressive running CV.

Today you would be hard pushed to find more than a handful of current British runners able to reach those incredible times, and it is with this immense wealth of top level competitive racing experience that Dave now draws on to help as many athletes reach their own pinnacle of running excellence.