It occurs to me that I have really written about how Busso went for my athletes. Given the race was nearly three weeks ago, I thought I should probably get on to that. In a nutshell, my athletes ranged from happyish to very happy, which as a coach is all you are really going for. For the athletes who were just happyish, most of the issues were time related, basically hoping that they would go faster. When it comes to discussions about time, there is conversation to be had about whether athletes are adequately prepared. It is a difficult conversation to have with athletes, but sometimes they ..read more

Well, Busso is all done and dusted. Similarly, my racing season of paddling is mostly done too. For me and most of my athletes there are no races on the immediate horizon, at least not for a few months. So, what to do now? My answer to that question is simple. Resting. Often at the end of intense period of racing you are pretty pumped. Other times, all you want to do is put away the equipment and never look at it again. Whichever end of the spectrum you are, I always feel it is important to give yourself a bit of downtime when the season allows it. The purpose of the downtime is twofold. If ..read more

First post in a week. Apologies for that. A month or two ago I realised that I could no longer sustain my daily blog routine, there were just too many other demands on life and something had to give. I am still figuring out what a sustainable blogging routine is. Not sure what the answer is yet, but something I am working on. Anyway, here I am now and what a time it is, the night before Busso Ironman and Half Ironman. Very exciting. I have 5 athletes racing tomorrow, it was supposed to be 6, but I had one pull out last minute with a few niggles. In that group I have a few experienced athlete ..read more

Far out, this sure is an intense race period, for both myself and the athletes. On a personal level I have a bunch of paddle races going on at the moment. There is an event going on in Perth at the moment called WA Race Week. Basically this is a series of paddle events that go all week. On top of that, there are actually more events next week. All up it means 6 races in about two weeks for me. Phew. Obviously not all those races can be A races, it would wear you out too much to even try. For me the race last night, and another one on Saturday the 31st will be the key ones. All the other even ..read more

It can be amazing how much different attitude can make to how you feel and how you perceive experiences. I was really grumpy earlier this week. I mean really in a foul mood. Haven't been that annoyed for a while. The source of my annoyance was this. I have a race on this weekend which is the first of a Championship series. The series is made up of three races, he/she who gets the most points wins. Pretty standard stuff. However, on Wednesday I got news that the race that was supposed to be happening on Saturday was going to instead be combined with another race and done on Sunday. This decis ..read more

Here we go, three weeks today, the count down is on for Busso. Been having a lot of "race prep" type conversations with athletes this week. "Where do I get my wetsuit fixed?" "How do bike aid stations work?" "Why do I feel so tired?" "What spares should I carry?" "How do day bags work?" "How early should I arrive in transition on race morning?" The list of questions goes on. And I love them. I like these questions for a couple of reasons. Firstly, giving this sort of advice and information is one of the things I like most about coaching. I love having these chats. The "how does this work ..read more

After the annoyance and frustration that made up training last week. This week has been off to a comparatively great start. Training has been coming together exactly as planned and so far I have achieved 100% program compliance, recovery has been holding up okay and things are generally ticking away as they should. Always a nice feeling. Good to be back in the swing of things. A bit fatigued today but looking forward to another good couple of days of training to round out the week. On the coaching side of life, things are similarly ticking away as planned. We are really getting down to the po ..read more

Well, this week has been a struggle, but I think I am finally turning a corner, I felt almost human today. This cold, or whatever I have been suffering from, has been a real pain for the last week or so. I am not sure, but I suspect it was my body chucking a tantrum about too many late nights, too much training and not enough recovery. I know I certainly push my luck when it comes to sleep etc and so my body was bound to get sick of it eventually. Last week it really just felt like my body fell in a heap and couldn't dig its way out, culminating in a day off training on Wednesday and a day of ..read more

No training this morning. I got up but headed back to bed. Sleep, sleep, sleep. My slackness wasn't based entirely on laziness (not entirely), but also on my HRV reading for the morning. I have been feeling a bit scratchy since the weekend, with a bit of a cold threatening and my HRV scores have been correspondingly low. I ignored it on Monday and went paddling and ignored it yesterday and went riding, but this morning I thought it would be silly to ignore my third straight day of low HRV scores so decided to give it a rest. I am hoping a good night sleep tonight will see the way I am feeling ..read more

I have been home again now for a few days and rapidly getting back to routine. I gave myself a couple of easy days, not training Thursday or Friday but haven't wanted to leave it too long as I have a number of big races coming up over the next month or so.  The intention was to crack back into training this morning, but I woke up feeling rather average. A bit of a scratchy throat. Unfortunately falling ill after a racing trip away isn't unusual, but I was hoping to avoid it myself. Not sure I have fallen into full blown illness, but certainly not feeling wonderful.  I did manage to get out ..read more