No Time

Phew, some weeks you feel like your feet barely have a minute to touch the ground. For me this week has been like that.

Work this week has been full on, simply flat chat. I have had between 6 to 7 hours of meetings every day, which has meant that I have really struggled to have time to do the rest of my job. Busy, busy, busy. Things should improve next week, but for now it is fairly all encompassing.

I mention all this because the busy work has meant that frustratingly coaching has really felt like it has taken a back seat this week. As much as I would like to be spending more time talking too and working with my athletes, I simply haven't had time this week. I have just finished e-mailing the athletes that I haven't already spoken to this week to get my weekly sitrep, but the fact that I have been writing those e-mail at 8:30pm once the kids have gone to bed is indicative of how busy the week has been. I have written before that I think my natural style of coaching is quite hands on and personal, which I am quite happy with. The flip side to that coaching style though is when you don't have the time needed to coach that way, it can become very frustrating.

Still, I know deep down that this busy week is fleeting. I have known for quite some time that this week was going to be insanely busy, it has just been one of those perfect storm weeks where a number of crucial meetings have landed on consecutive days. I have known full well that this week was going to mostly be about survival and that extra-curricular things such as coaching were going to have to briefly take a backseat. Knowing it ahead of time doesn't make it any less frustrating, but it does help knowing that it will get better again very soon.

I was talking to Paul Newsome the other day and he was saying back in the day, before Swim Smooth took off ,he remembers busily doing his day job, and then spending all his evenings and spare time doing his coaching job. At the moment I can fully appreciate where he was coming from. I don't have aspirations of becoming the next Paul Newsome, but if doing some hard yards now will help me become the sort of coach that Paul is, then it they are moments worth sacrificing. Besides all I was likely to be doing tonight instead of coaching was watching TV, so it is hardly like the time was going to be constructively utilized anyway.

Having said all that, tomorrow I will be starting the day with a bit of coaching (before going into 6 hours of meetings at work). The coaching tomorrow will be running another session in the Front Runner cycling studio, so in terms of coaching it is pretty cruisy, given that I get to be warm and dry for the entire session. Should be pretty fun. In fact, while not having much time to enjoy my coaching this week has been frustrating, at least the lack of time is helping me enjoy the time that I am getting.

There is a bright side to everything if you look hard enough.