As part of my wife's present employment, she has the opportunity to meet & collaborate with several of the smartest people who work in the telecommunications industry, both here & abroad. Sometimes it means a great deal of travel for far away locations. After last year, where she spent 25 weeks somewhere else other than in close proximity to her adopted greyhound, she decided to be more selective as to the places she would travel for business.
Face it, in the 21st century, we have the technology to take care of most business functions virtually, with varied degrees of face-to-face interaction. We can conference call, have web-meetings, share document storage spaces, & so on. However, just like virtual coaching requires an agreed sharing of communication, and individual responsibility, but can be a pale substitute for in your face coaching, virtual business operations sometimes are not as good as that face time, too.
So, it wasn't too much of a surprise when the organizers of a womens' business seminar in Malaysia learned my wife was going to be relatively close by (Singapore) when their seminar is convening. They graciously offered to fly the missus over for the day so she could make a presentation, then fly her back. A mind-blower for Suzanne, because more often than not, she's offering to go places (on her company's dime) to talk about her role in the industry, how she's managed to learn so much tech stuff (as a non-techie), & so on.Her business partner said, in so many words: 'cool. How about you take my wife over with you, so she can talk about her point of view?' When I heard this, I was appalled at the chutzpah of my wife's business partner. In my mind, my wife has not busted her @$$ for the past ten years developing a reputation in the telecom industry & made all these connections...so her business partner can justify sending wife-number-two on a junket by hanging on the coattails of my wife's hard-earned reputation. How dare he?
Sometimes a coach (or athlete) has to let their reputation stand on its own & not hang on that of a better-known partner. After a couple of (coaching) generations it's almost silly to attach a program or an individual coach's reputation (directly) to that of the forebears; Lydiard, Cerruty, Igloi, Daniels, Henderson, Higdon, Pfitzinger, McMillan, Galloway...Once you move out a couple of "coaching generations"; say, your coach's coach is even two generations out from the theorists, you (or I, as a coach) have to be smart enough to say 'here are my influences' for a number of reasons: First, the layman may or may not have the first clue of the "genealogy", & probably doesn't care that your coach's coach's coach trained world record holders, world champions, Olympic medalists & Olympians. Second, almost every coach collaborates or rips off from more than one coach throughout their career. Third, the individual coach's success may...or may not...have to do with other factors which could (or could not) have been under their control; individual athletes, facilities, technologies, just to name a few.
As Karl Marx was reputed to have said near his death, 'I am not a Marxist.' Lots of people claim paternity, but how many of the fathers are willing to claim the progeny in return?
I had a sneaking suspicion the other morning when I saw more birds flying and landing around the porch roof, which was reinforced after I saw something that looked a lot like an open mouth peek out from the entry. Lots more chirping going on, plus lots more bird flights, plus at least one opened mouth, definitely equals little birds.
While I love my d-a-w-g, I have an affinity for birds. To me, they're humans with very funny feet. We all have to have a soft spot in our hearts for something, I guess. Some old curmudgeons, like my paternal grandfather, transmogrify into peanut butter-like substance in the sight of their grandchildren. Well, that's what my mother once told me. (I occasionally saw the softer side of my grandfather, but it seemed more common in the years after my grandmother was gone.) 
There's the challenge of coaching; sometimes you want to let your guard down in order to prove you are as human as the athletes you coach. But then it becomes hard to remain consistent in your communications. Seriousness does have its place in the coach-athlete relationship, especially when it comes to communicating fatigue, pain & injury. Most athletes don't want to let on how badly dinged up they are; some harbor the compulsion to exercise. Not like I've ever been in that situation, personally...
When I'm asking about what & how badly something - or more than one thing - is hurt, I have absolutely zero time or tolerance for long, drawn-out tales. I want, no need to know in an objective manner what hurts, where, for how long, & to what degree. And while that 'one to ten scale; one means "what ache?" & ten means "shoot me now"' comment may sound flippant to the casual observer, I know how many points to add or subtract for the individual athlete.
For example, one of my teammates was the kind of athlete who would run until you told her a bone was sticking out of her leg, at which point she would ask, 'who's bone is this?' Tough little gal. Shame she's once a runner now.
The main thing is to not be bad @$$ in three easy lessons or dumb @$$ about running & physical fitness. It's to teach people how to be a smart @$$, at least smart enough to know when and how to back off so they don't spend the next year sitting on their @$$ watching it get fatter because they are injured & cannot exercise.