knowing when

One of the biggest challenges as a coach is knowing when to recover someone. Today I am speaking of my own coach / athlete relationship..... meaning me as the coach and me as the athlete.

I woke up about 3am with my heart pounding. I took my pulse and my normal 38 beats per minute was 56. Eeks. What's that about.... I wondered? I felt tired (it was 3am.....) now I never wake up in the middle of the night. I am a sound sleeper, this week I have woken up every night. I pulled a 30 hours straight awake stint on Monday that's taken me days to recover from. I am struggling a bit this week.

So me the coach made a 3am announcement. It was time for a few recovery days.

Hooray! Me the athlete cheered.

Now those were 2 things that are new to me.

Prescribing my own recovery before I completely fall apart....... and then me cheering it.

As I scroll through my training last year I realize how little recovery I had. for this I won't blame coach T, because the coach / athlete street is 2 ways. He always gave me what I asked for and there were days I was tired and didn't want to complain. So he was doing exactly the right thing. He was creating the plan based on the data I gave him. His plan was always rock solid, and it's what I base my training on now. The change is that I am being a lot more honest with myself. I was so afraid to disappoint that I wasn't willing to be honest with myself. In the end it hurt only me in retrospect.

I think people sometimes blame their coach for their failures when it ultimately lies within ourselves. A coach can't force you to complete the workouts. A coach can't feed you motivation on a spoon. A coach can try but realize a coach, and even me to myself is just 10% of the equation. A coach, and this is even me to me..... can only work with what they are given.

If you give a coach 10 straight weeks of 15+ training hours, coach may wonder if it's recovery time, but based on your feedback.... might take the risk and keep going forward.

If you give a coach 10% of the weekly volume completed..... if you give a coach nothing but shortcoming, nothing but complaints..... that's what you will get in return.

And I am specifically talking to the Mary / Mary coaching relationship.

My liability is always my work ethic. I will never be one of these people who can barely scratch through 5 hours a week and hope to PR in an Ironman. I will always be the girl who forces through 25 and falls apart at the Ironman.

So I have to look at myself objectively.

I fill in my training log, just like you do. Every single day. My parameters of sleep and soreness and stress are the highest priority. Before I go to bed each night, just like I look at yours...... I look at my own log as if it were one of yours.

I also send myself a daily email. Last night's email was this:

Hey favorite coach.....

As I was about to embark on my 2 hour brick I got a call from work. I was supposed to be there at 4p and not 8p. Which screwed everything up. I see I am losing memory a lot this week!!!! I thought of ways I would get in the workouts when I got home and then realized, I have to bag this round. I HATE THAT! It weighs on me. TWO HOURS MISSED!!!!! TWO HOURS!

Love your favorite athlete......

Mary


When I woke up at 3am, went back to sleep and woke again at 6...... I sat down to look at my own stuff. I wrote myself an email back......

Dear favorite Athlete:

Why are you trying to pound through this week????? It's winter break, your 30 hours of sleep stint screwed you for the week, and you are forgetting things. I am cutting down the weekend workouts. Your priority is sleep, and zone 1 workouts. I think we got this before you put yourself in a hole. Be good to yourself.

Love your favorite Coach.

I opened up Training Peaks and reluctantly changed the weekend workouts. I created a few goals for myself. And then I allowed myself to look ahead. I would like to move into a good five week build towards New Orleans with the focus being big bike weeks. My running is coming right along and I am going to begin brick work this week as well.

So we have to be honest. With ourselves, our coaches, what our life affords at this moment. This was a difficult week in terms of sleep and schedule. Life gets out of whack like that. The one thing I have going for me is that I have escaped illness. I have had 3 one day illness days. SINCE November. I work in the petri dish of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. 20 hours a week my hands are in snot, vomit and blood.

That's a case for letting yourself be exposed to that stuff and allowing your immunity to be built up.

So a little R&R this weekend. Making sure nutrition is on the forefront, as that's the foundation of all of this...... and then we go from here!

THANKS COACH!