'Ey Coach!!

Erin took this pic of me on her phone. She woke up in the morning to find me chugging away on my "hamster wheel" as she calls it and thought it was amusing. I like to call it the "pain cave". Much more impressive and tough sounding...

Well my friends, I have finally gotten a coach! That is to say, I am trying out coaching for a month or two and seeing where it gets me. I have a feeling, though, given what we've already done and how hard I am working in the first week that this will be very good for me! Besides generally trying to do better, put down better times, stay out of injury, etc, the point of this coaching is to be sure that I don't end up "tied up" and in the hospital after my next half in June... So we'll see how it goes!

So far he has already totally overhauled the way that I run. Well that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the one change that he has made to my form is to increase (significantly) my cadence and just that one change has made running into an entirely different animal. First of all, I have to think about my run almost constantly while I am adjusting to the change. But secondly, my legs don't feel as pounded as they normally do after and during a run. I feel like my footsteps are lighter. I really hope this helps with injury prevention, which it logically seems like it might.

Next week I will be going for a ride with him. I am actually kind of nervous about this. My biking has been pretty slow so far this season, and on top of that I just have relatively poor handling skills. I am ready for him to make me start over from the ground up. Time to learn how to ride a bike all over again!

In terms of hospital prevention, I think we're going to be working on my nutrition and particularly my race day nutrition plan. Anyone have any experience with Infinit Nutrition, btw? Apparently you can customize your own drink formula? This is the direction I believe we'll be going.

Awesome brick workout today, although I had to do it quite early in the AM so it was too chilly outside for my ride. I got outside for the run though, and it has turned out to be a lovely day. I worked myself pretty well, and am already a bit sore from the strength training my coach has added. Yay! I haven't been sore in quite a while, honestly, so it's sort of refreshing!

Alright, time to EAT