Self coached triathlete over 60
2024-01-12
A few years after I turned 50, around a decade ago, I did my first triathlon (a Xterra). I still remember it as a very hard race, manly because the swim leg was very difficult with very high waves, the bike course was on earth mixed with sand, which gave no possibility to relax, so I was very exhausted when I started the run. I finished the race as one of the last athletes, but was very proud that I finished as there where many DNF much younger than me.
Today it is interesting to see how unstructured my preparation was and how I under evaluated the race. I used the hills around my house for training and to build-up my mountain bike skills in a weekend warrior kind of way, the hills have solid tracks, no sand here. My swim skills was lacking and I only mastered breaststrokes for the environment I had to race in. Last, as a semi experienced trail runner, I was very confident in my running skills, but had no experience to run when I was so exhausted, as I was after the bike part. All in all I would characterize my training for the event as spontaneous with no plan. In general, structure and plans was nothing I bother my self too much with. I liked just putting my shoes on and go out running.
All this changed later thanks to my lack of swimming skills. I have always been a fair breaststroke swimmer, while freestyle was very difficult for me. I realized if I wanted to do triathlon races, I could not do it with breaststroke only, and I needed swimming lessons to learn freestyle!
I inscribed myself in a triathlon club there had a swim teacher. The training with this teacher was total unstructured, and if the teacher corrected me more than 5 times in the two years I was training with this club, it is more than I remember. This brought my awareness to the important of having structure and planing in training, and it seams I had to do it by my self.
There are many free trainings plan out there on the Internet, there promise many things, but I final found two books there really helped me: 80/20 Triathlon by Matt Fitsgerald & David Warden and The Triathlete’s Training Bible by Joe Friel, I can’t advise these two books enogh.
I have also been looking into having a coach, but what I found was most coaches give you a training plan, check in with you if you following it, maybe change it a bit and that is all they will do, while happily asking you for more than 100€ a month. This is not what I needed and need. As the two above books explain very well how to set-up a structured training plan, I see this kind of coaching a waste of money. I would like to appeal to all coaches out there, a training plan can NOT cost so much, you have to give something more. What about to meet your athletes in person and begin to help them swim, bike and run correctly, correct all the bio-mechanic we need to be more efficient and do not hurt ourself!
In this blog I have started I will try to describe my ongoing journey to be self coached and do this as an older athlete.
Some links: