All done

Phew, well that is the end of an epic weekend. Family catch ups, athletes appointments, program writing, an entire morning down at an event, the list goes on, the last three days have been jammed packed. Here I am at the end of it though and I have made it through, mostly in one piece too....

I am calling it a win.

The morning spent down at the race today was a particularly good bit of the weekend. The race was the Rockingham Sprint Distance, which an annual feature of the Triathlon WA calendar. In my opinion it is probably the best sprint distance race that we here. The water is always great, the course is quick and the racing is always red hot. It was a long morning, and quite unpleasantly hot, but it as always it was a stack of fun.

From a Coaching capacity it was not a bad weekend. Front Runner Sports probably had a good dozen or so athletes competing (a few more I think) and I had three of my folks there. They mostly had good days with a podium to one of the guys and a PB to one of the girls, so can't complain. The day ended up being pretty brutally hot, so not all the races went to plan, but everyone got across the line smiling in the end.

As well as being enjoyable, for me these events are also great learning opportunities. You learn a lot from doing the races and you learn a lot from the coaching training you get, but sometimes the place you learn the most from is coaching. My lessons today were around tapering and the fine line between enough taper and not enough. One of my athletes came in today a bit borderline with regard to fatigue. He had tapered well, but according to TrainingPeaks he was on the edge, which is exactly what he ended up feeling. My gut feel was that I should have tapered him a bit harder and I think that gut feel was probably correct. In the end I don't think it impacted the race result, but it is a lesson for me to take away.

Besides those learnings though, it really was a good and very satisfying morning out.

Now that this epic weekend is done with though, if you don't mind I think I might go and have a bit of a lie down.