Yes, Master

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. I'm not getting a coach. I know too much to be paying someone else to tell me what to do. I know my body better than anyone else. I like having the flexibility to make last minute changes to my training as opportunities come up. I don't need to waste $200/month to have some Joe who's read The Triathlete's Training Bible impose rigid periodization on me. Coaches are for those richer than me whose priorities lie in different places. Nope. Not me. No sir-ee, no coach for me.

Well, I hired a coach.

This season has been a huge disappointment for me. While I am riding way better than last year, indeed better than I would have thought possible, I haven't made any headway in any of the goals I set out for myself. I did one road race, and when I realized that my legs were strong enough, but I didn't understand how the tactics worked, I chickened out on any more races. I decided that I was going to do more ultraendurance riding, but without a game plan more detailed than "ride as long as you can," I kind of lost interest.

I'm so comfortable with triathlon now that I forget how long it took me to feel like I really understood how the sport worked. I needed someone to take me by the hand and show me how to race all over again.

The other thing that I realized is something that many of you have seen all along. I was washing my face in the morning, and suddenly it hit me. I had done too much! Last year I did four marathons, two 50K's, one ironman, two half ironmans, and a 12-hour ride. My body could handle it, and I don't think that I dug myself into a hole. I was proud of what I did in 2008 (and the first 2 weeks of 2009). The epiphany I had in my bathroom at 5:00 a.m. was that if I hadn't spent a week before each of those races resting up, and a week afterwards recovering, then I would have had twelve more weeks of quality training that might have made me faster. Clearly, I needed a mediator to remind me about the big picture when I found myself making another impulse buy in active.com.

After such an unsatisfactory season, whichever event I picked, the ADK 540 or Ironman Cozumel, I wanted to do it right.

So I started looking into coaches. But what kind of coach? A triathlon coach? I looked at some reputable triathlon coaches' web sites... and already I wanted to run and hide. Just looking at the images and credentials on these coaches' web sites made my skin crawl. I love doing triathlons, but I also love being a swimmer, a biker, and yes, even a runner (sometimes). There's just something about triathletes... they're so busy swimbikerunning that they forget that they have all these skills to get out there and do FUN stuff outside of swimbikerunning. I did not want a coach that was going to take the fun away from me.

So what then? A cycling coach? But I know how cyclists think. In some ways they are more rigid than triathletes. Cyclists take their rest as seriously as evangelical Southern Baptists take their Bibles. "Never take the stairs when you can take the elevator. Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down," the mantra goes. I have never been given such a stern talking to as cyclists give me when I ride rather than taking a rest day. How would I satisfy my urge to go out and smack myself from time to time when everything was so heavily regimented and quantified by heartrate zones and workouts that fit neatly onto a spreadsheet with columns for power, and heartrate, and elevation gain, and time in this interval, and time resting? How could someone who sees training as a math problem train me to ride for 24+ hours at a time when the only goal was to not get off my bike? How would it go over if I ever decided to go for a swim... or (god forbid) a run?! No, clearly a pure cycling coach wasn't for me.

Luckily, I know Big Red, and Red knows everybody. On a ride with Red's friends, the guy who she said I could never keep up with (and I later beat) mentioned that he knew a guy who had coached some guys to RAAM. Team Strong Heart wound up taking second (out of twelve) in the 4-person male under 50 division. So he knew long distance cycling. I looked at his web site: he trained people for road races with the options of: "Training will focus on key races or being strong for many races each week, what ever your goals are!" Hey, that sounded pretty good to me. Then I looked at the racing highlights of his clients: Ironmans, cycling category upgrades, stage races, wins, wins, wins. Big Red's Friend Who Is Not Quite as Fast as Me gave me a glowing review, so I knew that he would pay attention to what I had to say. Finally, I spoke to The Man himself, and when he told me I wouldn't be doing any 100-mi. bike/10-mi. run bricks, I was SOLD!

So I am now trying taking orders from Eric Kenney, Endurance Coach. A couple hundred dollars later, I got my first week's orders... a week early. His first order? STOP! He wanted me rested for my training. He made me sit still for a whole, entire week. ME! Take a WEEK off! Can you imagine? With only a few clandestine errands on my fixie, one secret 80-mile ride with PJ, and an illicit 28-mile guts-out drop ride, I got through my week completely OFF.

The Man now has me resting well for key workouts. Begrudgingly, I'm giving it a chance. I'm getting re-acquainted with my heartrate monitor. I've never been someone to put much stock in a HRM, but I understand that in the absence of power, it's the best way to get an idea of how hard I'm working to someone who lives thousands of miles away. On my first workout by zones (3x12:00@175-185 bpm) I had a BLAST! I've always thought of my heartrate as something that held me back. It seems like you always have to keep their heartrate UNDER a certain limit. Now I was having trouble getting it ABOVE 175, and flying around corners at 25 mph. It was great!

I'm sure that Claire taking orders will lead to hilarious hyjinx, so don't forget to check in often. Also, there will be some exciting new developments with the blog soon. If you enjoy the race reports and my pugnacious rambles about training philosophy, then this blog is about to get way more interesting. If you wish that I would adhere to a 500-word limit in my posts, you too might get a little relief. More to come.