Let’s talk about your experiences with some real Triathlon coaches! I want to hear if you got your $ worth! Friel? E-grip? Training Bible.com? Niles? Multisports.com (Frey/Huddle)? Etc, etc, etc.?
Also, recommendations for Ironman training?
My coach is Mike Plumb.
Great guy, great coach. I’ve seen improvments, and lots of them.
Email me directly if you want more info.
I used Michael Mccormack (coach to Karen Smyers, Gina Kehr, etc) while training for Great Floridian. His motto is quality over quantity and if you train slow, you race slow. He’s also a big believer in indoor trainers, especially Computrainer. His workouts were hard and INTENSE, but not long. Typically 45 minutes - 1 hr on the bike during the week. Intervals on the bike followed often by intervals on the track. I got fast but I also got overtrained. His success rate is pretty good if you look at the athletes, pros and age groupers, so he’s doing something right. www.triathloncoach.com. He’s worth checking out.
I use a local coach here in NJ, Don Fink, who is one of the best Masters IM racers out there. I got lucky in that I got in early, he’s got a hell of a waiting list now. I absolutely believe I get my money’s worth (and then some), and because he is local I can call him on the phone, set up 1 on 1 sessions with him and all that. I wholeheartedly endorse the idea of a coach; the results I’ve seen have been far more impressive than training on my own.
It’s kind of like comparing apples and oranges. Most coaches are quite good and you’ll get your money’s worth, but do you and the coach “click”? Does his/her methods or program work for you? Those are the important questions, not has Joe Blow had success with them. Case in point: Chris Carmichael and Lance are a perfect fit. CC and Peter Reid weren’t.
That said, I have personal experience with the following and have success with all: Julieanne White; Roch/Huddle and Multisports.com; Gordo Byrn; Michael McCormick. I know others who have had excellent results from Mike Plumb, Kevin Purcell and Rich Strauss (both with Friel), Scott Molina, Mark Allen, Duane Franks (NorCal), Phil Casanta (NorCal).
I tried trainingbible.com for 3 months and it is good. The only downfall I had was getting online to figure workouts. Thats why I stopped. I found it easier just to use paper and pencil and follow his training guidelines out of his book. They are the same I just dont have to be online to schedule or reference them.
If you want a generic Free Ironman training plan you can get one at trienwbies.com. I used their half plan for a reference and it will definitely get you there, but even better if you adapt it to your weak/strong points.
My coach is Brendon Downey whom has coached probably most notably Jill Savege in the past. He’s been great for me thus far, and his cost will beat anybody.
I have used one on-line coaching system in particular in the past and found that it did not suit me very well. I chose a coach based only on his credentials and forked out major cash (just under $400/month) for what amounted to someone putting workouts on a website and me saying I did them. I needed someone to help me with my stroke technique, someone to evaluate my bike position, someone to help me with my diet, someone to help me schedule my workouts around my already hectic life and someone to tell me when I had done too much. The on-line coach only helped with the last of these and I often felt extremely overtrained. (Incidentally, I was told this was expected when training for an IM.) I leave off the name here simply out of respect for this coach. I’m sure that he has helped others, but he wasn’t what I needed.
In summary, I’m just trying to warn people against signing on with a coach simply because some of his professional athletes have succeeded. No coach is suited to every athlete!
-Jay in SL, MI
I used TriMyCoach (Sonni Dyer, et.al.),…very good for beginners. They get you set up and monitoring yourself by heartrate, and tend to be on the low-heartrate, lower intensity training side of the continuum than some programs I’ve seen. They did get me out of the 85% max heartrate training all the time mode I was in. I DID get faster than I thought I would training at low heartrates. However, I strayed into the world of very hard intervals, and not so much of the lower heartrate realm, and my results got even better. Currently, I have a particular set of cranks kicking my tail every time I have a lazy “recovery” pedal stroke…hardest, most intense, unrelenting coach I’ve ever had! I love my new coach!
yeah brendon is in Auckland now working at the Millenium Institute of Sport and Health. I’m going up to see him and get underwater video taped next week probably.
I’ll tell him you said hi.
Allan Besselink @ smartsportintl.com. Unlimited e-mail/phone contact and very reasonable rates. A physical therapist by trade. He takes less is more to an art-form. I’ve struggled with him over the decrease in volume but its hard to argue the results, 2 races and 2 PR’s thus far (4 months).
Ok. This is a test! Why should I use Ms. White? I’ve been thinking about a coach, but am a tight wad and have to be convinced. On the one hand, as slow as I am one would think ANY coach could have positive results with my body; on the other hand, at age 60 how could I possibly improve much more?
This coaching business strikes me as a really delicate and difficult matter. I don’t think anyone has fully explicated all the variables, at least not to my satisfaction.
-Robert
why ms. white?
- she’ll email you within 24 hours of your emailing her. always.
- she’ll correspond with you as often as you need it and, as opposed to quite a few other coaches, she’s not happy when you don’t correspond; she’s concerned and she’ll tell you so.
- she’s been-there-done-that, with 9:08 in canada and 9:21 in kona, and still holds bike and run course records all over the place almost a decade after retiring from triathlon.
- she’s still being-there-and-doing-that, as one of the top women’s masters runners on the U.S. road race circuit.
- she’s got proven results with her athletes, pro and AG alike, and she’ll be happy to give you references, as many as you want.
- she’s especially adept working with those who have tight schedules and/or need to work around unique problems.
- pursuant to point #6 above, she’s got a knack for picking up the road kill strewn on the multisport landscape–the casualties of self-coached or badly-coached–and turning careers back around.
- she caps her load at a dozen athletes per season.
- she’s not really that expensive, and will try to work within your budget. she doesn’t charge you for your off-season, and she makes you take an off-season.
- she’s got a more organic approach than you’ll usually find in the coaching world; she knows how to properly apply therapies, nutrition, etc., better than the garden-variety coach.
- with her workout weeks are like chess games: no two are ever alike. you’ll get your workouts a week in advance. perhaps two weeks in the exception. that’s because she won’t know which workouts to give you unless she knows how you responded to the past week’s workouts.
- she’s not building an empire. she’s not hiring coaches underneath her that she must manage. she’s not got other, more pressing profit centers and time constraints. she cares about your performances. she’s glued to her computer all day long when there’s an ironman in progress, looking for the splits and finish times of her athletes.
other than those dozen reasons, i can’t think why you’d want her as your coach.
Ditto, you won’t find a better coaching value than tripower.org.
John
As past president of two chess clubs I can easily relate to the difficulties both the coach and athlete encounter in balancing the many training variables. Unlike chess, however, coaching doesn’t have a rating system! :), j/k
Also, chess has a FINITE set of variables! 
Anyway, that was an impressive list in support of Ms. White. But, I have a feeling that with Julie as my coach I’d be like the recreational rider who shows up for a tempo ride wearing a Cipo kit. Le Poseur. Or, like going squirrel hunting with an elephant gun… I just don’t feel worthy. Anyway, it isn’t really just the money, it’s the fear and loathing in my “heart of darkness” that every time I go to a race the guys are going to say: “And he has a coach! Bwuahahaha!!” Coming from the Midwest, where pretense is crushed like a CAT IV in an Open race, I try to be slow making a fool of myself. And, at my age it gets easier by the minute.
-Robert
I use Kevin Wilson in Ottawa, Canada. He and his partner Ken Brunet are exercise physiologist (not triathletes) and they work with many types of power and endurance athletes. If you want someone to teach you the tricks on how to be a better triathlete (eg. transitions, technique stuff etc.) then they are not for you. If you want someone who uses excellent physiological testing techniques and training based upon these assessments then these two would be great. They base all their training on progressive workload to max tests with blood lactate measurements. These don’t have to be done on site. They can mail you a kit and you can have a friend run the test with you (as long as you have access to either a computrainer or a treadmill). I also think you would pretty much have to have a computrainer to train on to get the most of their expertise because they prefer using power over heart rates.
Kevin has been great with contact. It seems like I could phone him everyday and he would be interested in addressing my concerns. Several times last season he totally revised a monthly plan due to my needs.
They are on line at http://www.peakcentre.ca
Personally I liked the physiological approach (lactates and power are better than heart rate as measures of workload) and wanted the time I spent to be as effective as possible.
I went 9:53 at Ironman Canada (first ironman race) and qualified for Hawaii where I went 10:24. Totally blew my expectations away. I have no problem recommending them.
Whomever you pick, make sure they fit you.
Richard
ahh see then you need a sport psychologist—cause youre being prevented from improving based on ego. Youre concerned about what others are going to say about you, react to you, how you’ll be perceived etc. This is one of the toughest things I deal with–is dropping the ego. Its very vulnerable. You dont have to tell anyone you’ve got a coach or whom it is or that you pay $375 a month or thereabouts.
I think the question to ask yourself is what is my goal for triathlons----finish an oly dist race? and IM? qualify for kona? do a tri with an open water swim? etc. And then ask yourself do i know how to get myself there without wasting time, getting injured, peaking at the wrong time etc. I dont think many people know how to do that—i know i could be better at it, and thats why i got a coach. You dont have to get one coach or another. Heck you dont have to get one at all.
Depending on your goals, you could be successful without a coach, many people have. I doubt Dave Scott had a coach when he won kona back in '80. I know Carol Montgomery doesnt believe in them. But thats proabably the exception rather than the rule.
if you were to consider the range of ironman times of the athletes with whom she works, they span eight hours, that is, from 8-low to just-making-the-cutoff. i would suspect median time of a julie-coached-athlete is right about 12:30. you can determine where you fit in there. one thing, tho. they didn’t start out at their current respective speeds. last year one english guy went from 14-and-change to 10-and-change in the span of one ironman, and qualified for kona.
i don’t know what to say about the social ramifications of having a coach. i had one as a freshman in high school. didn’t seem to bother me. but i know what you mean.
there are a couple of cases i remember that were pretty satisfying to me to watch develop, just as an onlooker. they both involved wives of good multisport athletes who employed her as a coach. of course you can imagine what happened. within a year or two the wives were beating their husbands, and this created a whole additional set of issues.
you’d either have to suck it up and deal with the peer pressure of admitting you have a coach, or just keep the dirty little secret to yourself.
Ah Robert, you need to just get over yourself. I am a native Midwesterner (born and raised in Kansas). I am not Cipo-like at all, in fact, very often, at the back of the pack. Julieanne coached me to my first (and still only) Ironman finish and treated me as well as any pro. If you do a little digging, my race report may still be somewhere on this site.
Robert,
I’ve seen you finish 2 IM’s and in my book poser is the last thing that comes to mind. Respect, is the first thing that comes. You had a better race this year, whose to say that you can’t keep getting better? Harder may not be the ticket, smarter (coach) may be just what you need.