Meet your coach!!!

Sometimes I do watch MTV, not the Jersey Shores or Real World... can't stand those. I like the show Made, it's basically MTV following the journey of teenage kids who try  to become somebody that they never think they could. Half of the shows are about not-so-sporty kids that want to excel in sports. In the first 10 minutes of the show, they meet their new coach and the journey begins there.

Last Thursday was my turn. I met my new IM coach. I went to see Mary. This is our first meeting. I was going to wait until she was done with IM AZ, but she had time for me this week. I took the opportunity, the sooner the better. Before the meeting, I had to fill out athlete questionnaires that were long and had many questions about my athletic background, which wasn't much, my current workout, previous race results etc. The questions really made me think about my journey from the first day I picked up running in Feb 2006 (yes I remember that day vividly since I hadn't ran for ages and out of the blue, I decided to run one day) until today, 3 Half IM's later. I had a lot of questions about the training program for IM. I like the facts that each week can have a different focus. One can be a swim focus week or bike or run. It breaks the monotonousness of triathlon training. We also talked about the timing the long run and long ride. Most of the times the long run is the day after your long ride but we would mix it up a little bit during training. The long run may be mid week or a day before the ride. This new concept is to get the feeling of running with fresh legs and minimize injuries.

We are also going to use Training Peak, it's an online software that posts the the training schedule. I will need to log in to enter the length of the workout that is completed and any comments about the training. It's great for accountability and for Mary to monitor my progress.The training will officially start in mid Feb to be exact 24 weeks before the race weekend. For now, I will use her base training schedule to make sure I have a strong base. I'm so glad I started doing P90X 6 weeks ago. I felt I have a good routine for upper body strength training. My pulls during swim are a lot stronger also. For lower body strength training, I'm happy with the combo of Lance workout and P90X. What I need to add right now is riding outside again. Ride 30-40 miles in the cold, which I'm not too fond of because my nose is like a hose. I need to blow my nose every 10 minutes. I will start that soon with the Spring team.