The end of another week

Well that is the end of a rather massive week of coaching. Fair to say I am absolutely exhausted. I feel like I have completed a week of Ironman training, rather than just watching others do it.

My Triathlon related activities for today were confined to a bit of a ride and then a whole lot of program writing.

The ride bit was done nice and gently as I was keeping Gary Couanis company on his last long run before Ironman WA. I have done several of these sessions with Gary and it has been a lot of fun each time. Really it is just a chance to a chat and he runs for a couple of hours. I get to be out and about on lovely mornings and Gary gets a bit of company to help the run pass faster. Win win really. Today was no exception, with another couple of hours of quality chat this morning.

There are no guarantees in the world of Ironman, all sorts of things can go wrong. But for Gary he can head to IMWA with the knowledge that there is really nothing else he could have done to be more prepared. The training is basically done now, and it has gone well. All he has to do now is execute. I am really looking forward to seeing how that goes.

The other bit of coach work today was the real coaching bit of coaching, which is program writing. I had 5 program to write today which took me quite a while. While my programs are all based on a common Front Runner framework, they are also all personalised because each of my athletes is different. They have different fitness levels, different amounts of time for training and different goals. That means that one size certainly does not fit all. This style of coaching means I will probably never have time to coach a whole bunch of athletes, but it also means that I think they all get the attention that is owed to them.

Writing programs for all these athletes individually was a bit of effort today, but very satisfying once it was done.

Now that this heavy coaching week is over I have a couple of days to myself, before doing it all over again. This coming week of coaching is not quite as heavy as last week was, but it is still a bit more than I would usually do. Still, the challenges bring a lot of fun too and so this week should be another great one.