Hey Dan,

Is your coach actually writing the plan or using "trainingpeaks", or something similar? To my knowledge, "trainingpeaks" is a selection of pre-written, generic plans that a coach can choose from to fit each athletes needs. If you are paying big bucks for a coach, he should be writing a plan specifically customized for you based on his knowledge, and experience matched with your goals and needs......and he should back it up with good customer service

MZM

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**All of these words finding themselves together were greatly astonished and delighted for assuredly, they had never met before**

on training peaks, a coach can also design custom plans that are nothing like training bible- a coach can pretty much customize their own programs on it OR use the templates provided

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Jason Goldberg
FIT Multisports

Hey MZM,

As far as I can tell his has a bunch of workouts that he chosses from. That is to say I often repeat certain workouts. I could not tell you however if he wrote them himself or not. He does have certain Time Trial workouts that he bases my HR zones on (i dunno how) that I are new every so often however.

Thnx for the Reply

Dan

Seems like the first thing to do would be to tell your coach what you just told the rest of the world. If that doesn't fix things, you would probably have better luck finding a coach through a personal referral rather than an ad so you can find out how much personal attention you can expect. You could also try reading some books, talking to other triathletes and see how you progress going solo.

If you are new to the sprort, just join a masters swim group, ride with a bunch of experienced local triathletes, and run with a good solid tri running group. These "mentors" will likely impart more value than any coach with their collective years of experience. Then after 2 years and having built some serious base, go get another coach and fine tune things. You can get a program off the web and bounce ideas off lots of experienced folks here on slowtwitch in the mean time.

Dev, after all the years in the sport that you have, I bet you've realized by now that you do things a bit differently in order to suit your personal needs. Now why do you give advice to others based on your personal needs?! That always puzzles me about you.

DanTri said that he wanted to be good at triathlon, do you really think that "joining" different groups is the BEST way to improve? What he needs is a coach that follows him carefully. And also a honest one, that can tell him if he can make it in the bigtime or not.

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

you've got to be fuckin' kiddin'!

you have a coach to coach you for Olympic Tri's.?

drop the coach and buy a few books, coaches are highly over-rated and any real triathlete will think you a fool for having a coach if you're only doing Oly. distance races.

Tim

Tim,

Your response seems rather harsh. A coach can help in many different ways...for some people, breaking through to a new Olympic distance PR is no less meaningful than finishing a half- or full-IM. I'm sure we could have a long debate about whether a sub-2 hour Olympic distance is harder than a sub-10 hour IM (or 9:30...whatever, you get my point).

I agree with Dev's earlier comments that the guy who started this thread would be well suited to find local 'mentors' who can help provide tips and guidance.

Cheers,

Matt

What are you talking about? If he wants to be a competitive Olympic distance triathlete he needs a coach. If anything, it's the IM guys who don't need one. I would bet 90% of the people racing in the ITU circuit have coaches, while I know a lot of IM pros are self coached.

Any "real triathlete" will see who's the fool here...

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

Dan:

The primary misunderstanding, it seems to me, in hiring a coach is the athlete's expectation of the "business" of coaching. You are the buyer - You are hiring some one. How much are you paying them for what you are getting? Imagine that they get $20 hour like an average suburban house painter. How many hours do you want from them? If you want to talk to them for 2 hours a week, that'll be $40 or ~160/month or $1,920 per year.

Think about the seller - the coach is selling his services. How good a job is it to have you as a client, "yielding" $160 pre month. That might or might not sound like a lot to the buyer, but to the seller (the coach) it isn't enough to make him really take notice of you economically. The coach needs 10 athletes of that type to gross $19,200 per year. 20 athletes means the coach works 40 hours a week and earns $38,400 per year. And you are one of 20 athletes vying for his attention every week.

So, while we would all like to think coaches are different types of people who do things to help others and their love of the sport, at the end of the day, the coach has to pay the bills.

Unless a coach can "resell" his services multiple times, or price them at the very top end of the spectrum (note Barry Bonds own trainer was apparently sleeping in his car) then the athlete coach relationship can't go very far.

For most people, it seems that a coach is a primarily a motivator. I understand that people think that they are time savers, but for the life of me, I can't understand how that is. Just trying to communicate exactly how you feel and what you did to a coach would appear to take a lot more time than I spend just reviewing my own activity and reading about the sport and learning myself. At the end of the day, it is the time you put in and the amount you learn about yourself (in context of the sport) that will make you a better and faster athlete.

So I (as a self-coached athlete) think that since you seem to have a decent start on decent times, that if you bought a book or two (try Sleamaker's SERIOUS program as it is the easiest to really do...most of the others are like software designed by eggheads, great in theory but impractical to use...see Friel's 200 permutations of workout levels!) and read all the mags and references here and at http://www.coachgordo.com and just went through another year on your own, you'd be ahead of the game, no matter what you spent on a coach. This year is probably the year you take a big step up in terms of self knowledge and learning. Again, success in this sport is more about listening to yourself than anything.

Thanx for all your advice guys.

I didnt mean to start some sort of coaching debate here just wanted some advice and to those that gave it to me I appreciate it. I do enjoy having a coach not only because of time but because I believe in learning from the experiances of others. A mentor could do this true and I may look into this but I believe that having a coach will help me take myself to the next level both mentally and physically. As far as some people thinking it is silly to have a coach for oly distance my guess is that we are approching the race with different mindsets. This is only a guess but I think in general just aiming to finish an iron event is a daunting task which would be worthy of coaching and it not might make as much sense to hire a coach if you are just aiming to finish a oly distance. But this is not my goal, while I would like to some day do a ironman, I want to take advantage of my natural speed in my youth and get as fast as I possibily can in the oly. distance, sub 2 hour is a goal of mine. I think coaching will be helpful in this. Just my opinion though.

Thanx again to all those that helped,

Dan

Didn't mean to sound harsh at all....just realistic!

Dan said:

"On the other hand one of the main reasons I choose the coach that I did was because his program included unlimited contact w/ him. This, however, has not been the case. In general I find him hard to get in touch with and talk to him maybe once every other week. I often feel like somewhat of an afterthought to whatever else he is doing. While his workouts seem good the rest of the package seems to be lacking."

I was encouraging him to ditch this coach since he obviously isn't getting what he thinks he should be.

Being in college I wouldn't think that you'd have extra money to throw away on a coach that obviously isn't helping you and you feel like you're getting ripped off.

Dan, please share the name of this coach so that others will stay away from him as it sounds like he promises big and delivers little.

Is it really normal for running pace to slow at the age of 20? I've never heard that one!

It would be interesting to poll the other 29 people that finished ahead of you (or the 10 in your AG) and see who had coaches and who doesn't.

Tim

Most that finished ahead of me in my age group were coached because they were on the Navy Academy Triathlon team. Their coach in fact was at the race. I think my running pace has slowed due to some weeks off in the off season and just starting to build my base again but thats just my guess.

Thnx dan

that's why having a coach is supposed to be beneficial, it takes the guesswork out of training.

but I guess if you can only reach your coach 2X per month then you have to guess at alot of stuff!

Tim