Update

Claire... Claire? Are you still alive?


Yes. I'm still alive and well. I'm just working a ton: 12-14 hours a day plus 8-12 hours of paperwork in the weekend. I'm teaching about 5 spin classes a week and doing another 4 boot camps in addition to the personal training and it seems like my biggest achievements have been massive quantities of stinky and soggy laundry. It leaves me with so little energy in my free time when I think about writing it's like my mind splinters against any complex thought. In a recent interview with a cycling-specific gym the owner asked me what my last competition was and what my next would be. I hemmed and hawed and gave some bullshit answer. It wasn't until afterward that I remembered that I'd won my age group in a trail run the week before and was planning to do a 24-hour run. He was a putz anyway. Long after the fact and after much fractured rumination I realized that my biggest event lately has been my career. But my head is still in the game!

So what have I been up to? For the first year I was here, I felt like I was on a treadmill; working my ass of and not gaining any real ground. And then all of a sudden it was like I burst of the front of the treadmill and started running. I hit my stride and haven't slowed down since.

I have two career goals: to revolutionize how people think of training (putting the fun back into competitive endurance training), and to have people know I'm awesome without my having to tell them.

I don't have to tell you, I'm awesome.
This summer I finally got an audition at a local chain of gyms called Club One. I'd dropped off a resume a year ago, and it took this long for them to get me in the door. Once I saw the quality of the other cycling instructors, I knew I had a lock on it. The interview was structured like a class, with each applicant standing in front of the group and teaching a 10-minute set while the other applicants took it. When it was my turn, I could see several of the other instructors in my "class" smiling and one of the interviewers even whooped. Even though I threw the mic across the room in the middle of the class (it kept whistling), and saying something rude and presumptuous to the general fitness manager in that Claire way I have, I was the first call she made the following Monday morning and she rearranged classes to get me in.

Unbeknownst to me, after only a couple of weeks of teaching there, the fitness manager of the Olympic Club (a club where another member has to sponsor you to join, that hosts events like the US Open, and there are gilded marble columns around the pool) contacted the Club One fitness manager to scout cycling instructors. Then she started sucking up to me. Weird.

Meanwhile, much to my surprise, my clients started bringing me more referrals than I knew how to handle and other trainers started referring their clients to me. Every time someone dropped off of training, two people stepped forward to take their places. Where was all this coming from? I still felt like I was learning how to translate what I knew into other people's training plans, and suddenly people were getting results that I thought were due to gimmicky infomercials.

It's a good thing that other people are doing me the favor of singing my praises, because I'm so used to downplaying the races that I do in my free time that I forget to talk about them when necessary. While offhandedly listing your athletic accomplishments at a dinner party deserves burying a fork in the boaster's eye, mentioning that you've set a few course records yourself would actually come in handy if you're trying to suck up to the former IM Canada and course record holder when you tell him that you'd like to become his protege. Duh. Oops.

Changing the world
I still haven't quite figured out how I'm going to change the world yet. I have visions of owning my own facility with performance-oriented group workouts, getting paid to run training camps in France and New Zealand, and most importantly my meme stamped across people's asses, but I'm still waiting for the path to that one to materialize.

But when you're on the right path, doors seem to open of their own accord. Sometimes the path is circuitous and comes from your blind side. The spot where I work used to prohibit group classes because of space, but they recently decided to start running group classes. "We want you to do a cycling class and a running club," Ducky told me.

"Are you kidding me?!" I said. "You're not set up for indoor cycling. You don't have bikes. You don't have a sound-proof room. You don't have a stereo system, or a mic (which you'll need to be heard over the sound system in a non-soundproofed room). You only have one shower. It needs its own facility!"

"So open your own facility," was the obvious answer. Duh! I'd never really thought of that as an option before, but as I started visiting other facilities, I realized the poor quality of all the places but one that I visited and how much money could be made if you do it right. The plan started to germinate in my mind, I realized that that's what I'd been working toward the whole time without meaning to. Cool! I still have no idea how I'm going to get from here to there, but at least I have a destination and a compass.

The has-been
At the end of the day, though, I'm floundering. I'm not training for anything and can't get my head in the game for any performance goals. I wanted to train for a BQ marathon, but then only a few runs into the program I gave up. I just hated road running and was too tired to run fast anyway. I simply don't have time for training rides. I wish I had the fierce passion for competition that I had in Boston, but I spend so long thinking about the performance of my clients that when it comes time for my own workouts, I just want to unwind with a relaxing run through the woods or a long ride with friends. I'm never out of breath anymore.

I don't want to believe that my best days are behind me. My cycling power and muscle mass are at an all-time high. I'm even running as fast as I've ever run. I'm just flummoxed about what to do with it.