Journey to Kona Day 94: The Value of a Coach

I've had the same triathlon coach for 14 years.  In fact, we're about to have our 14th anniversary!  Lucho has been a great triathlon coach, but he's also been a life coach and a role model.  The key to being a good coach is listening.  I'm sure that my analytical obsessiveness could easily drive a coach crazy, but he knows that''s who I am and he puts up with it.  My "setting the bar high" must also be a challenge, as I've never actually reached a goal that I've set.  Life has often gotten in the way, plus, I do tend to set goals that are unreachable.  But that's who I am, and he lets me be me.

Yesterday's blog was really a message to Lucho for our weekly talk, and it really helped me to prepare to decide what's next.  I put together a plan about a week ago, but that plan is already being adjusted as my response to training evolves and life gets in the way.  I had planned to do a bit more training so far this week, but we decided that I could "catch up" with a long bike on Friday with a short run off the bike to test my legs and then a long run on Saturday.  That will put me four week out from Ironman Boulder and will be a great test for where I am.

I had posed the question of whether to run long first, or to bike long.  I probably knew the answer, as that's the one thing having a coach for 14 years does, I know myself and I know what Lucho is going to tell me, most of the time.  At the end of the day, his job is to make sure that I don't do anything stupid, which wouldn't be too hard for me.

I've also had life and work coaches over the past decade, and they too have been invaluable to me.  Again, the key to good coaching is listening, and I've been blessed to have some great coaches.  In some ways, they've helped me survive some very stressful situations.  Ironically, without them, I'm not sure that I'd have even been in those stressful situations!  But that 's overthinking things, as I tend to do.  I'm also blessed with a wife who's arguably my best coach and greatest asset.  Every mistake I've ever made has tended to be because I didn't listen to her!