Steve Magness breaks up with his girlfriend because she does Crossfit.
Tons of pre OT vids over here.
Earlier this week, I had a series of those moments where within a short period you are hit with some common theme in completely different contexts. It leaves you wondering if something or some power (if you believe in that) is trying to send you some sort of message. And earlier this week, I was getting a message about coaching. As in me acting as a coach.
It first started in talking with a colleague at work about work. In the middle of the conversation, he paused and took a complete tangent. He asked “how come you have never taken up coaching runners?” Then, completely separately, but several hours later and also at work, it was someone asking me about training for a marathon. And so there was a conversation with that. How many weeks until your marathon? What goals do you have for that? How much training do you do now? And then outside of work, in conversing with a friend they turned the tables on me while I was grousing about my performance and training. They asked if I were to coach them with an assumed focus on PPM, concisely state what I would have them do (this was really a trick question because it was about me defining a plan for myself … a future post).
With a very full time life at this point in my middle age, I don’t see me taking on a running coach role anytime soon. But I have occasionally given it some thought. I swayed from thinking I could do it pretty well to realizing I am about as unqualified as many of the internet hack jobs there. It is not that I don’t have an opinion about how someone should train or a lack of willingness to share that opinion. I just question if I could provide the right coaching for an athlete to best ensure their effective success. I see folks who are pretty dang spanking good at this, and frankly, I am not not sure I’d be in the same zip code in terms of the service they provide. And I am sort of nervous I’d screw someone up pretty good.
Part of this self doubt was made pretty clear to me when my friend turned the tables on me with the “pretend you are coaching me” experiment. I saw what he was trying to do, and it left me wondering if one has trouble coaching themselves, how the heck are they supposed to coach others? Yeah, I get that we are often our own worst counsel (and not just in running), but there is something to be said with exemplifying what you are preaching. The thought experiment that he proposed should set up a trick that disassociates you from your own idiocy. The classic example is when we see a friend runner who is thrashing day in and day out and just want to go up and say “dude! Take a rest day!” That runner knows that they should but gets wrapped up in other demons in their own head.
II ain;t ready to coach, but it might be my retirement gig. I might be smart enough by then. If I start working on it now.
Tomorrow … my thoughts on a training program for myself for 2012. Short synopsis … reverse periodization.
Oh yeah … in case you were wondering Lake Ivanhoe is not ready for snowshoeing.
