Last year I talked about deciding on a coach and a little bit on how to go about doing it. This year, I have decided, myself, to ensure I can have the best year possible by spending a little bit of money to get my hands on a high quality coach. For me, the decision was pretty simple: Patrick Brady Coaching. Pat is a friend of mine and an established triathlete not only in the Madison area, but across the United States. He just recently became a pro after a long and hard fought year of training and falling just short on multiple occasions. Having recently raced his first race as a pro at Austin 70.3, he came home with a 12th place finish in his pro debut. Not too bad. Needless to say, he knows what's going on when it comes to coaching.
Being somewhat of a data geek myself, I was lead to him pretty quickly, and his analytical approach to training and racing is something reminiscent of my high school track coach. They way both of them break down training and races into a science helped me to lean towards Pat instead of some other, albeit amazing, coaches in the Madison area.
I just started up with his coaching a few days ago to start off the month of November, and already I can feel my motivation is much higher. The stakes are higher as well. I don't want to be wasting my money and both my and Pat's time by not being committed. So we're all in.
The first thing I have noticed about having a coach is just how organized I need my weeks to become. Before, I was somewhat haphazardly putting together my week of training, solely building it around my schedule for family and work, and honestly, what I felt like doing. Things have changed now.
This is now what my week looks like. Through Training Peaks, Pat is able to setup workout schedules for me in advance. This helps me to organize my week(s) and give him feedback right away should something not fit my schedule properly. Instead of being so focused on cramming in hard workouts as often as possible, I have this laid out for me, giving me a better macro view of my training setup. I lead into each day knowing exactly what I will be doing and won't miss a beat. If I do, I need to talk with Pat about getting things back on track. Should some family emergency arise or something with my gear, whatever it may be. I can have an open conversation about how to readjust my goals for the workout and/or week.
This feature above gives us the opportunity to see what the planned workout is vs what I am actually able to complete. Looking down at the micro view, I can see what I should be hitting for targets and how to go about doing them. As you can see in this session, my main set for swimming is 8x100 yards/meters (depending on the pool) at best effort on 20 seconds rest. There is a good amount of buildup into the main set to get my muscles loosened up and firing properly. Whereas before, I spent too much time in the main sets, and less on the warm up and cool down. Again, just cramming them in.
Pat is able to go in and build each day with notes and ideas for how the session should go, and once I complete the session, I come back and login to my Training Peaks account to log what I completed. As you can see above, I was planned for 1hr of training. However, it took me a little les than that to get through all 2,000 yards. I can also add comments once I am done to give Pat feedback about how I felt about the workout and note any sets he wanted recorded.
This is just the beginning. Expect to see more and more high quality data analysis in the days, weeks and months to come.
-Dave
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