Where the hell did THAT come from?!?!

I really, really need your guys' input.

I've been really dissatisfied with my coach. I have many grievances, but these are the big ones:

1. He is training me to be slow. I understand that a triathlon is a swimbikerun (as Rocketpants put it), not a swim, and a bike, and a run. But this guy wants me to do the swim and the bike so slow that I would have to have the run of my life to significantly beat my time from last year. The swim "Ironman pace" he has chosen for me is so slow that I have to interrupt my stroke to go slow enough to make it.
   
2. I feel like he's not listening to me. This ties into point 1, but it also has to do with conversations we've had where I've said, "In the past I've seen improvement by doing XYZ, not ABC." And he says there will be more XYZ in my program, but when I check my schedule, it's all ABC. He says one thing is tiring me out, and that's why I had a bad next workout; but all I keep thinking is a 45-minute swim/2-hour easy bike has never tired me out before. I didn't feel tired.
   
3. I am so very bored! I knew that I liked being my own guinea pig, but I never thought that training would be so bland without it. I find myself dreading most of my workouts now that I can see them coming from a mile away. I hate training these days. The only workouts that have been fun are the ones I wasn't supposed to do.
   
4. I just can't afford it. I thought I could when I hired him, but something seems to come up every month. The cat gets tapeworm, the car needs an oil change, I need a new cassette... I just don't seem to have the financial flexibility to pay for it on my unemployment checks.
5. I've felt like I'm getting weaker. I haven't felt so aerobically out of shape since I quit drinking and smoking. It's hard to pinpoint, especially since he won't let me use bike speed as evidence of lost fitness, but I can feel when I'm having a bad day. I've been having a lot of bad days since I hired him.
   

So I was all ready to fire the guy. About a week ago I started looking at my training plan as more of a suggestion and throwing half my workouts out the window. I stopped following his pacing suggestions, and started going faster. I rode a hard, hilly century on a day when I was supposed to do an easy 3 hour ride. I replaced two rides with runs. Then, I moved this week's key workout up to when it fit better in my schedule. So rather than taking an easy day followed by a rest day leading up to this workout, I just plunked it the day after a tough trail run (and two days after a relatively intense brick). The workout was a 90 minute easy ride followed by a 10K running time trial.

I ran a fucking 41:58 for a 10K! This isn't just fast for me, we're talking is my Garmin broken? fast. I almost shit myself a month ago when I ran a 48.5-minute 10K. So where the hell did those extra SIX MINUTES come from? (I uploaded the data, and it seems sound).

Last month's 10K: about 65º and sunny
This month's 10K: about 60º and cloudy/windy

Last month's 10K: on a flat to rolling course following a day off
This month's 10K: on the track as part of a brick, following a 90-minute ride

Mile 1: 7:24; 6:42
Mile 1.5: feel like I'm going to shit myself; feel alright
Mile 2: 7:37; 6:13
Mile 2.5: get a stabbing pain in my right kidney; get a stabbing pain in my left kidney
Mile 3: 7:53; 6:34
Mile 3.5: hit the wall and consider ditching the workout; slow down a bit as a preventative measure, poop feeling goes away
Mile 4: 8:00; 6:59
Mile 4.5: start playing mental games; begin to feel like my legs are drained and wonder how long I can keep it up
Mile 5: 8:08; 7:04
Mile 5.5: just aim to get through it; start feeling a bit nauseous but figure I have less than a mile to go
Mile 6: 8:02; 6:50
Mile 6.2: finish in 48:35, av. 7:50; feel like I'm going to throw up; finish in 41:58, av. 6:46; am convinced I am going to throw up. Somehow I don't

There are some things that might have contributed:

• I take these pills called Optygen. They're fucking gold, I tell you. I kind of felt that they made me stronger, but I'd never been off them for more than a few days at a time until two months ago, when I ran out and couldn't replace them. This could have something to do with why I felt so weak, and why I feel stronger now that I'm back on them. (They're legal, by the way, and recently coronated as "the official supplement of Ironman"). However, I was still on them when I did the last 10K time trial in 48:35.
• My nutrition has kind of sucked lately, and I've only been back on the ice-cream-free wagon for a week or two. But I've eaten well in the past and never run a sub-seven minute mile, let alone 6.2 of them.
• Is it the coach and the low volume, or is it that I've finally ignored his advice and gone with my own instinct that I'm better slightly tired than I am fresh? I'm sure that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
• Could it be that my Garmin really was shitting itself? I mean, I was running on a track, and it seemed pretty consistent with the distance per lap... but there also were train tracks next to the field that could have fucked with the satelite signal...
• After about 2 months of running in 90-degree temperatures and stifling humidity, it's finally cool again. Finally I can cut loose again.
• I only started running again about 6 weeks ago, and before that I'd done significantly different training than my usual triathlon training program. Meaning that my 10K last month was on almost no run training in over 6 months. Maybe this time was already coming? Has cycling put me in better aerobic shape, which is only translating to better running times now that I've got about 6 weeks of running in my legs again?
  

So the question is: Is my coach holding me back, or is he a miracle worker??? What do you guys think?

Update: I really appreciate all your input, and it's interesting to hear everyone's take. I have some responses to the comments I've gotten so far.

BANDOBRAS: That's an excellent point. So you think that the fact that I didn't feel good till I chucked his plan in the trash is telling me something? (serous question)

TRIHARDIST: Boo! That's an EXPENSIVE gamble... But I'm coming around to the idea.

GRETCHEN: I was running so hard I had no idea WHERE I was.
To clear up everyone's comments, I WAS following the plan religiously for the first 5 weeks and feeling pretty miserable. Then I decided that he was full of shit and started ignoring it. That was a little over a week ago. After about 9 days of doing my own thing, THEN I blew my own times out of the water.

JUDI: I've only been working with the guy for 6 weeks, and only following what he said for five. I don't think ANYONE can give you that kind of fitness improvement in so little time (legally), they can only tweak something to bring out what was already ready to happen inside. But I'll take my own words into account in my decision. He has been telling me that I've never been rested enough to know what I'm really capable of. However, an ironman ends with a marathon, not a 10K. Less than 3 months out, the longest run I've been assigned so far is 1 hour.

BOBBY: Where did you get the idea that it was a run-intensive program? He has me doing about 60% of my training on the bike (I believe that the bike is not where the problem lies). If I were to follow his plans to the letter, I'd be running less the 15 mi/wk. The biggest change I've made since deciding to ignore him is swapping out bike rides for runs, adding about 50% more running. The run-intensive thing is all Claire and all in the last week.

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.