Find something that gives you a sense of enjoyment; that you can’t wait to get started once you get back from work/kids/family/life and do it. If it’s hard work, and you feel you have to do it, for the sake of doing it, then you will soon start believing the reasons you give yourself to stop.
Another hobby might just place you in the same situation.
Overall - I think suggesting you go separate ways makes a ton of sense. She’s right that she isn’t the right coach for you. Honestly, sounds like a really good, honest person (although whether this makes her a good coach or not I cannot say).
That said - the quote above indicates she’s a performance driven coach who is, perhaps, frustrated coaching someone with heavy conflicts on their time. I fundamentally disagree with her assertion that cycling at your age cannot be about improvement and performance. Down the road, when your time and consistency has changed - maybe by schedule changes, maybe life changes - I would encourage you to consider pursuing performance improvements, regardless of age
Some anecdotal data - I got my teeth kicked in by a guy with ten years on me this past weekend
Agree with this. I was a very athletic child and was often recruited for travel sports teams, but my parents pushed me toward non-athletic activities that suited their preferences. I don’t resent the skills I learned from those other activities, but when I left for university and started carving out my own interests, I went back to sports. The only problem was I missed out on 8-10 years of athletic training and development. I don’t have any delusions that I would have been a world-class athlete, but now in my 30s, I do wonder what could have been.
OP, sounds like you just need a TR subscription, use TrainNow when you can, and accept that your priorities are and should be directed toward your kids. If you really only have 5 or 6 hours a week but often skip planned workouts, you would be wasting your money on a coach.
Consistency is the first and most important component to making progress, everything else is fairly pointless at your current state.
It seems like this whole giving your life up for your kids and constantly shuttling them around is an American thing, not everyone seems to be OK with this FWIW.
Our sports culture is different. We have traveling teams that require lots of driving to travel for tournaments. Often those teams aren’t associated with schools or professional clubs so the burden for transport/coaching/chaperones falls to parents. Plus, it would irresponsible for parents to offload their kids on coaches in an environment ripe for abuse. I grew up in an area that was a 2 hour drive to the nearest major metro area, which is where soccer tournaments and other activities were held. To be competitive for the high school team, it was basically required to play club (travel) soccer as a pre-teen.
I’m not saying the OP needs to have no life of his own, but they are clearly struggling to find the balance. Maybe it means mom takes the kids on one weekend, and dad handles activities during the week.
In all honesty, you sound like you need to find a better balance between family, work and your own goals. There has to be time for all of them and that might mean compromise somewhere. If it were me, I’d get the kids to any event they wanted to do, but while they did it, I might go for a ride. I might organise lift shares. I might commute by bike and build in time that way. There’s a million ways you could do it. It’s healthy for kids to see their parents with their own hobbies and goals and to learn to learn that though mostly it’s about them, it isn’t all about them.
The first two points are exactly me, and my answer to the third one is no. This is why TR is so valuable. You can still be fast by blasting it with 1-1.5hr TR rides. Believe me.
To me, your coach bailed when you needed her the most. Sometimes, the cold objectivity of LV plans along with AT and AI FTP detection is exactly what you need.
It’s a screwed up system. Parents who choose to participate in these traveling teams where the kids train and travel like they are professionals are sacrificing their child’s academic future for sports. A kid on such a team will focus on the sport, not their school work or other intellectual pursuits. This kid is going to go to sports camp not science camp.
They will probably end up taking the easy classes in high school and maybe going to a small college where they can still play. After it’s all done, they are left with nothing and not the best career prospects nor the most rigorous college degree.
Some tiny percentage will make it to the Olympics and some tiny sliver of a percentage of those people will actually win a medal or sign a pro contract.
It’s not worth sacrificing your kid’s future nor the family’s time and money on a moon shot of a chance to do great things in a sport.
Just want to throw in another vote for TrainNow. Get in one VO2 workout and one Threshold workout a week. Fill the rest of the time with Z2 rides. Ride when you can and skip when your life requires it. You’ll stay fit enough to enjoy rides with your friends on the weekend when time allows and develop the skills to deal with the workouts when you have more time as your job or family life allow it…and you’ll save a ton of cash!
i’m about to kick a few of my fake clients to the curb because they’re all about “vibes based training” and not following my advice @Gnome is still ok though
Thanks for the shout coach!
you’re awesome!
I agree. My personal experience was that the high school sports and activities were so time consuming, one simply couldn’t casually participate. The practice schedules for everything were so demanding. I was in the band and between daily class + after school practice + football games, it was often 15 hours a week. I would have loved to play a sport but there was simply no time. I know many of my peers who played soccer in high school after years of club teams (including trips to Europe to play), and only a couple of them resulted in scholarships to universities. It seems like there are few casual ways to kids to enjoy sports without it becoming a full time job. [Veering way off topic, I ended up with a full scholarship to a decent university for academics, so maybe my parents were right to make me play band instead of sports, haha]
My impression of the original post was their kids are younger and interested in a lot of different things at this point. I think they should allow their kids to explore and then commit to a few specific activities as they get older if their child really wants to pursue them at the next level.
But maybe OP should kibosh the out of state trips in the meantime if it means the parents are suffering?
You left out your performance goals. Maybe with your current erratic schedule and goals her view is she can’t get you to where you want to go.
5-7 hours a week can work depending on your goals.
But there’s a big difference between 5-7 hours of consistent work WITH proper recover vs just cramming in 5-7 hours over 2-3 days.
I get in 2–3 1-hr sessions during the week and these days and I can actually show up to my local club ride/race each Saturday now. The latter wasn’t the case for several years when the kids were younger.
I do TrainNow for every workout. I’m having to do 2 sweet spot workouts (45-55mins out of 60 mins) and 1 Threshold workout (25-35 mins out of 60 mins). That’s my time-poor ‘base’. I’ll start swapping one sesh for VO2 soon. It’s weird not doing any zone 2 but why bother when I only have 3 hours during the week?
This keeps me in a FTP range of 270–300W. Not super high but keeps me in touch (I currently live in a flat area so W/Kg doesn’t matter nearly as much, but it’d be around 3.6W/Kg). I would love to get my FTP higher again but it is what it is. It took a few years but I’ve accepted it and know that higher watts may be in my future as time opens up again. Age be damned.
You could probably do more hours, wake up earlier; we all could. However, I do not adapt well to more hours. I just dig a hole and get sick. This sounds like it could be true for you, too.
As for the kids’ hobbies and teams, we let them do a few and say no all the others. It’s our opinion that they need to learn how to manage their workload and commitments, too, just like us adults. As teenagers, they’ve dabbled in lots of things by now and know what they really want to pursue. Yet, there’s always more. I’m also in the US now but grew up in England. It’s a shame that sports and many hobbies aren’t set up the same. I could do all the sports I wanted because they were at school or the coach (bus) left from school, etc. Here, it’s money money money just to access a decent level of sports unless your local middle/high school happens to be state/nationally ‘good’. $3–4k for a volleyball or soccer club season… sorry kid, no. $800 for that regional choir… OK, sure (but damn).
On a more personal note, on one hand, I’m glad I did lots of hobbies and sports. They’ve had an additive effect to each other. However, I be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m jealous of someone that picks 1, maybe 2 things, focuses on them, and masters them. I’ve told my kids this. They can enjoy lots of things but if they want to master something, they’ll need to say no to other things. It’s also OK to not do that, just enjoy a variety. Autonomy for them, their choice.
There are a lot of valid points in this post.
A very performance oriented coach may not be inclined to help with such an erratic schedule and illness etc. whereas others may be more motivated by helping an athlete getting the best out of a difficult situation.
There are quite a few people suggesting TR AT as the solution instead of a coach. Since I haven’t used that product I can’t comment in details. But I think it’s worth observing, that with such a hectic schedule and illness you might reach a state of ‘non-functional overreach’ faster than you think. So I’d be very cautious doing too much high intensity work.
Deciding when to push through and when to back off is definitely something the right coach can help you with. So perhaps give it another chance? Just be very upfront from the start and have realistic expectations.
lol She should tell that to all the masters athletes out there
There are many levels of coaching. From near full time that monitor you every day to one’s that will give you a plan to follow for some time frame.
. If you feel you need more of a trainer than someone to give you a written plan, those people are out there. You just have to find one. You might be wasting your money. Programs like TrainerRoad offer more bang for the buck. Plus you can adjust training as needed.
Getting faster at 40? I’m getting faster at 72 just using my normal riding with some structured TR workouts. If you ride / workout 2 days a week for an hour don’t think you will get faster doing the same thing over and over. It will take some increase in volume and/or intensity. Just adding 1 extra hour every week will help.
I feel a bit weird commenting this on this thread but the availability functionality and adaptive nature of JOIN may work for you, to allow you to continue structured training while meeting the needs of your hectic schedule:
It’d certainly be worth a try to see if it jives with you.
Agree with all three of these. I have had this conversation with a couple of my clients who are erratic with their riding because “life”.
@TRusername from a coach’s perspective, it’s not about firing you. It’s about caring for your overall well-being and trying to provide value to our clients. As mentioned above, I have had this conversation with three clients, two of whom I no longer coach. One who is still struggling but coming along better and wants to keep at it.
I am not in this to collect money from people who don’t get full value from my coaching. I’d rather have a smaller athlete roster than just have people keep shipping me $XXX/month to populate a plan on TrainingPeaks that only serves to add stress to their lives and isn’t achievable for them.
I have never “fired” anyone yet. I have strongly suggested they save their money because they’re paying me to write lower-volume plans they can’t execute. In these instances, I steer them toward TR because I think of all the apps out there, TR is the best value, even as I fundamentally disagree with some of their training plans/philosophy. I’ve done it, I got some use out of it, and recognize it for what it is…
I say kudos to your coach, you should thank her! And yeah, find the way to get enjoyment out of your riding… that doesn’t mean you aren’t able to be competitive, but recognize it for what it is and where it fits in your life. It shouldn’t be your #1 priority all the time, and it can’t be. Just sit and reflect on that, and come to terms with where it fits, how much time and how many resources you can dedicate to it… and then be OK with what comes! Find the balance!
I had this conversation with one of @empiricalcycling coaches last month who is my personal coach. I had a tough January. Lots of moving parts and sicknesses in the house, some equipment issues… all of it seemed to come to a head at the same time. Ultimately there wasn’t much my personal coach could do but talk me through it. The conversation kinda pissed me off a little bit, but mostly in a good way? Through it I found some solutions and got myself back on track with his help.
Tough conversations with athletes happen and should happen. From my perspective with the three I’ve had in the last year, it was never about that person not being good enough or dedicated enough… it was about maximizing value for that person and trying to focus on their overall well-being, which in two cases didn’t include focused, structured training at that particular point in time.
@TRusername Kolie doesn’t need my endorsement as a coach, but there’s a reason I chose his team for my personal coaching when I felt like I was moving beyond my current expertise level for coaching myself, and wanted some oversight and objective feedback.