No, I don't use a coach. I am my own coach. I have all sorts of reasons for making this choice.
I have been coaching runners both professionally and as a volunteer for about 8 years. I became RRCA certified nearly six years ago and briefly had my own business. My volunteer duties with a local running club ended a few years ago but have been sporadically coaching runners on my triathlon team through our group workouts. I dissolved my business officially last year. I am a full time mom to two high needs teenagers and decided to dissolve my business and instead focus on their needs. Keeping the business did not seem necessary and I knew that down the road, I could always restart that career. The volunteer duties are at my discretion and that works well for me. I also spend some time advising friends on their running and goals and I always enjoy those talks.
I was an ok coach for a bit, and I was actually coached by others during my early marathon pursuits. But I remained a poor marathoner as compared to shorter distances. I absorbed all the knowledge from my RRCA course, tried to listen to others (good and bad advice, unfortunately), and continued to study training methods over the years. I went through a difficult couple of years medically that set me back in my marathon pursuits and took a couple years off from the distance.
In 2016 when my health started on an upswing and I felt like I could give the marathon distance another chance, I decided that I didn't just want to get better, but I wanted to become a good enough to go to Boston. Fortunately, for the 2019 race I'd be aging up and get another 10 minutes added to my qualifying standard, so my target timeframe became September 2017 to September 2018, the qualifying window for the 2019 Boston Marathon.
I had a lot of work to do. I had never taken heart rate training seriously, and few in my training circle had ever really suggested it. I vaguely had an idea of my training zones, but honestly wasn't comfortable with the idea of taking it as easy as the heart rate plans suggested. Training a minute or more over my marathon goal pace? That was a tough pill to swallow for my ego, even though I knew that was what I was "supposed" to do. What I always thought felt like easy pace was always too fast, and it took me a long time to realize this. Hence, why I was a crappy marathoner. When you are in big group settings and being pushed by others, it becomes very difficult to tune that out and do what you know is right for YOU. Having never been a runner until I was well into my 30's, I hadn't learned discipline yet and it took me forever to shut out the noise. Honestly, I needed to tune everything out and get into my own head, on my terms.
I didn't want to hire a coach. I wanted to do this on my own. I wanted to work around my own schedule, to be able to still train a couple times per week with my triathlon group, to analyze my own data without prying eyes, and frankly, I wanted to see if I could do it. I realize this sounds incredible stubborn, and I was incredibly stubborn.
Plus? Coaches are expensive and my family did not need another expense. Remember those high needs kids? One of them has needs that are quite expensive and that was way more important to me than anything else. I could coach myself for free, and I liked that.
If I failed, I'd suck it up and hire a coach.
In the meantime, I spent the rest of 2016 getting to know "heart rate training." It was a process and I was ok with it that first year. My body responded well, I had a good half marathon that October that told me I was going in the right direction. Unfortunately, I had not been able to completely control my asthma, and struggled in warm and humid weather considerably. My January 2017 marathon was very warm and humid and I had no choice but to take it easy during that race. I was very fearful of going into an asthma attack. But, I was happy with my race, although it was 40 minutes over what I would need later that year in order to qualify for Boston and 18 minutes over my PR set in 2014.
Meanwhile, I continued to read as much as I could, to pour over article upon article about training as smart as possible and adding in volume and getting my head right so I could believe I was capable of reaching a very crazy goal.
In April I changed up my diet and ended up losing 18 pounds by December, and 23 if you go back to my health issues from 2015. I was as lean as I'd ever been and stronger than I'd ever been. My asthma was being controlled better through some treatment changes on the advise of my doctor, and this was a really big deal.
I never relented in my pursuit and to do it ON MY TERMS. This isn't something that everyone can do. Many people need an accountability partner in order to stick to a plan AND I TOTALLY GET THAT. This was very hard on some days, and many times I wanted to just skip a run and sleep in, or to cheat on my nutrition plan, or not do that speed work. Many, many times I struggled.
But every time I looked in the mirror, and every time I analyzed my run data, I saw the vast improvement and it continued to spur me on to keep going.
I wrote a really tough training plan (for me). But I was disciplined when needing to run really easy, and frankly I started to love these easy runs. To not worry about hitting a certain pace felt so freeing to me. I didn't have to feel embarrassed at the time on my watch. It made sticking to the hard days a little bit easier and those hard days were getting better and stronger and I was getting much faster. I did leave one run per week in the hands of my triathlon club leader (on Tuesdays, we did either intervals or tempo runs) and she gave me the paces I needed to run. I sometimes thought she was crazy for saying I could run that fast, but her faith in me pushed me to do it. I'm not sure I would've had that same discipline without her. Christine remains a huge reason why my I developed my confidence.
I spent a lot of time working on my mental strength. While you do feel the physical effects of the distance as you enter your last hour of the race, most of the struggle truly is in your head. I knew that I needed to silence my doubt so I read as much as I could on the subject and felt much more mentally tough heading into my race season.
Writing my own training plan and being accountable to myself worked so well (thank God!) and I succeeded in my goal to qualify for Boston. My qualifying race gave me a 28 minute PR, and I ran it 46 minutes faster than the year before. I squeaked into Boston.
During this last year, I also ended up coaching my husband. He basically used the same plan that I had used, even though it was actually his first marathon. He wanted to BQ, too. He succeeded but unfortunately didn't make the cutoff to run Boston (9 damn seconds!!). This told me that how I was approaching training was working, that I had come up with a really good formula, and that I would stick to it.
I do believe that if I hadn't become injured (pulled muscle from strength training aggravating by interval running), I would have had a pretty good shot at setting a new PR at my planned December 2 marathon. I was running well through the summer, despite the horrid weather that just wouldn't go away. I tweaked the plan a bit to make it higher volume and a little more intense and I was getting through it, although there were definitely still times I wanted to sleep in instead of run. I'm very disappointed I had to pull the plug on my races and I'm basically starting over as I ease back into running after a four week layoff.
So there you have it. I am my own coach. I experimented with it and took a big chance that between my plan and my triathlon team leader's guidance, I could improve enough. Will I hire a coach in the future? Maybe! But right now, this works for me and I enjoy the challenge. We are all individuals and with different needs as runners, and what works for one person may be bad for another person. Only we can decide that for ourselves.
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