Accountability

Iron Man and Tiny Spock who held me accountable during the first part of today's long run

I am blessed to know many outstanding athletes--mostly age groupers, but I count among my acquaintances a few pros as well.  The primary attribute they all share is accountability--to themselves, to their coaches/mentors (if they have one), and to their own athletes.

I have mentored many people, and right now consider myself a mentor to 3 athletes, and I am formally coaching another.  Of my mentees, one is doing another Ironman imminently, one is beginning training for his 2nd Ironman, and another is recovering from an injury but is hoping to get in a first Ironman or close to the distance next year.  All three of them know not to second guess my advice, and if I ask any of them about how their training is progressing, I get the God honest truth.  What paces/power are they doing things at, what is their nutrition plan and are they doing it, are they recovering, are they hitting the targets or not.

Right now, I am my own coach, so I am only accountable to ME, but it really helps me when I have others who feel accountable to me, because it makes me feel accountable to THEM.  Why? Because I feel like I need to show them that I take my own medicine, and that the relationships go both ways.

The guy I'm coaching is a pure joy for me to work with.  Without me asking, he tells me how the workouts FEEL and if he's hitting targets and asks me if he can move workouts around.  He's a smart guy who raced bikes Cat 1 in college, so it's a little comical that I am showing him how to bike train now.  But it's triathlon training, not bike racing. He's going to turn into a beast to be reckoned with at triathlon, and I may even need to cut him loose next year and insist he get a better coach!  It is truly wonderful for me to work with such a talented person, as it inspires me to work hard and reinforces my knowledge of the training and racing process.  Thanks, Brad!

The same is true of the 3 guys I am mentoring.  Many of my training/racing platitudes (many of which have come from my own past coaches) come to mind just at the right times, and I find them spouting them back at me which is a real compliment, and I think I'm done reminding them where they came from!  Thanks, Carl, Maz and Sol!

I have trouble relating to people who aren't accountable to themselves about their training.  That behavior makes for poor racing, injury and sets a bad example for other athletes.  I am typically quite brash with such people whether or not they accept my opinion.

But luckily, such people are the minority in my circle of friends, since accountability is intimately connected with integrity, and if you notice, integrity is in my tagline for this blog.

Today, Iron Man and Tiny Spock (I just recently acquired Tiny Spock) held me accountable while I did the first hour of my long run on my treadmill, Hal.  In this case, holding me accountable meant I would run the correct paces for my training zones based on my current VDOT, even if I felt like running faster.  So for that first hour, I covered only 6.35 miles in an hour, where the first 30' were in Zone 1, 20' in Zone 2, and then 10' in Zone 4.

Then I went outdoors to complete the workout, and covered 6 miles in 53:40, or 8:57 pace, and the gist of that time was to be 5' Zone 2, 10' Zone 4, 5' Zone 2, 15' Zone 3 and 15' Zone 2. I went a little further out before I headed back since I wasn't sure how fast I'd run home, which is why I ended up going over 50'.  No worries, my Zone 4 stuff outside was at a fast clip, and I slowed down appropriately after it.

I had a slight miss on my run nutrition today.  Since it appears I am running faster than I did 4 years ago and my thyroid is working properly again, that means I need more calories while I run.  I wasn't too far off today, but I felt hungry when I was about 10.5 miles in.  I had plenty of fluids, though.  So noted in my training log, and I will do better on next week's long run.

Accountability...Integrity...Honesty...if you don't have those things, keep away from me!