So I am self-coached, and my wife does my workouts too (I try to modify them when needed to fit her needs so I guess I can say I coach her). I've had a lot of success with it and she has had some excellent results too, but she does seem to struggle to recover sometimes and often has trouble doing back to back hard workouts. She also struggles to ever do bike workouts hitting her target wattage (virtual power/indoor trainer). The bike struggles blow my mind a bit, she can sit down and to the 20 minute FTP estimate test (same one I do) and hit great numbers, then we turn around and she can't hit those numbers or reasonable percentages for short intervals in workouts. When I do the same workouts based off the same protocols using the same software I have no issues other than the normal hard workout suffering. I don't think it is a lack of motivation or ability to suffer, like I said she can bury herself and hit surprising numbers in the 20 minute test, she also just recently blew her half marathon PR out of the water (1:26) with just one day of rest, and is a former elite level distance swimmer (16:46 mile PR in high school) so the ability to go to a happy place and keep suffering is clearly there.
I know some of it is that she is a fairly new mother and the priorities are different now, but she is still motivated to kick butt in tri. The problems mostly present themselves on the bike, but it isn't rare for there to be consecutive sub-par swim and run workouts for someone of her caliber. Rest days and recovery weeks rarely help, and often just discourage her because she doesn't come back feeling great and she thinks the rest was just wasted time. Last year I attributed the problem to struggling to come back from having a kid in the offseason, so I made a schedule that was a much lower volume and never had hard days back to back, and often gave two easy days between hard ones. It fit her schedule but her race performance was predictably below her likely potential. This year the goals are a little more ambitious and she won't reach those goals without more volume and more intensity, but I am almost ready to turn back to the lower volume rotation and suggest lowering the goals, but I know her potential is there for a very good OLY and I don't want her to have to settle for less if there is an alternative.
One last thing that has occurred to me and I may suggest this to her, but it is hard to approach for a female athlete. I think she may be underweight, she is about 5-10 lbs below her college race weight. I also noticed she is about the same height but below the weight of most of the top females in long-course racing (according to the ST article on height and weight at Kona last year). Not sure if the lower weight is causing the recovery issues, and not sure I want to bring it up lol. She doesn't pay much attention to stuff like that so I don't think it would be good to make it an issue.
So that's the challenge. Anyone have a similar conundrum and a solution?
Powertap / Cycleops / Saris
I know some of it is that she is a fairly new mother and the priorities are different now, but she is still motivated to kick butt in tri. The problems mostly present themselves on the bike, but it isn't rare for there to be consecutive sub-par swim and run workouts for someone of her caliber. Rest days and recovery weeks rarely help, and often just discourage her because she doesn't come back feeling great and she thinks the rest was just wasted time. Last year I attributed the problem to struggling to come back from having a kid in the offseason, so I made a schedule that was a much lower volume and never had hard days back to back, and often gave two easy days between hard ones. It fit her schedule but her race performance was predictably below her likely potential. This year the goals are a little more ambitious and she won't reach those goals without more volume and more intensity, but I am almost ready to turn back to the lower volume rotation and suggest lowering the goals, but I know her potential is there for a very good OLY and I don't want her to have to settle for less if there is an alternative.
One last thing that has occurred to me and I may suggest this to her, but it is hard to approach for a female athlete. I think she may be underweight, she is about 5-10 lbs below her college race weight. I also noticed she is about the same height but below the weight of most of the top females in long-course racing (according to the ST article on height and weight at Kona last year). Not sure if the lower weight is causing the recovery issues, and not sure I want to bring it up lol. She doesn't pay much attention to stuff like that so I don't think it would be good to make it an issue.
So that's the challenge. Anyone have a similar conundrum and a solution?
Powertap / Cycleops / Saris