Taking A Pulse

Every once in a blue moon I try to take the pulse of the folks who have trained with me at the track at one time or another over the past couple of years (and sometimes longer). I've asked for e-mail feedback, put my phone number out there, and pretty much maintained as close to an open door policy as can be expected. This time, I figured a survey would put numbers out there, or at least provide a degree of anonymity to the folks who felt the need to say something constructive without fear of retribution.

Lessons learned:

1. Anonymity does not guarantee response constructivity. Some enjoy the opportunity to take pot-shots behind the cloak of anonymity. Even if you made changes/improvements it wouldn't change their opinion of you, and they probably wouldn't come back to train.
2. Rick Nelson was (and still is) right. Those of you who are old enough to remember Rick's last hit (in his long hair stage!), Garden Party, know the tag line: 'You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself.' Not every coach is a good fit for an athlete. Not every training program is going to work for every athlete. Read a Carmichael Training Systems press release, and they talk about training 5-time IM champion Peter Reid. However, when interviewed by Bob Babbitt and Paul Huddle, after retiring from active competition, Reid mentioned he and CTS were (ultimately) not a good fit. So, you have to figure it out for yourself whether the training plan or the coaching is a fit. If it's not, then move on and chalk it up to a mismatch.

3. Sometimes you might be an influence, but not the influence. Several athletes I coached intermittently (because of outside constraints) have credited me (to my face!) with their recent personal successes (e.g., qualifying for and completing the Boston Marathon, completing one/more Ironman/70.3 triathlons). When they tell me, I am honored and humbled; those moments make the efforts worthwhile. However, I tell all in earshot it was their own hard work making success possible. To paraphrase Paul of Tarsus, when citing successes in his church work in Asia Minor: '...I planted...Apollos watered...God gives the increase.'

One respondent asked (as far as I can tell) how I keep track of athletes with highly divergent ability levels. I try to track where everyone is in their training without micro-managing. I ask for individual goals and goal races every six months or so, but I am past the point of worrying about a lack of administrative detail (e.g., no six-month goal, no goal race, and so on). The athlete who wants to communicate their goals to me, does. Otherwise, it's safest for me to presume their racing schedule is constrained by the local calendar, which means they'll be doing a lot of 5,000-meter, relatively flat road races.
One good reason I don't go micromanaging a particular training plan (unless its my own) is because I've offered to help draw up a plan, including work outside of the track. Lots of folks, especially recreational runners, don't want to commit 9-11 hours of their life each week to running. They like listening to music on the beach on Tuesday nights, going to the downtown concert on Thursday nights, sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
And I understand that. I don't want to do it, but I understand it. I try very hard not to consider those persons who choose to have lives outside of running as children of a lesser god. It's possible I will have a life outside of running; for now I choose to live it vicariously through them. And, by golly, they need to do a better job of it (just kidding!).
If Ethan Barron, the XC/track coach at Tufts, were sitting with me over coffee, I think he would remind me, 'respect yourself, then do your best. Acceptance by others should never outweigh those two things.'