I'm being controlled!

Help!  Some sort of crazy troll is taking over my life via a strange cyber mechanism called Training Peaks!

Yes, it's true....   She Who Must Be Obeyed is no longer the only woman who is monitoring my every move and scaring the living you-know-what out of me!.....   yes, that's right, I broke down and hired a triathlon coach!

As posted previously, I'm serious about this triathlon thing and determined to put in some real effort in 2011.  Rather than try to work out your my own schedules and try to improve via Brownian Motion, I decided to call in the professionals! 

My friend Lisa works with a coach called Stacey Richardson who is based in Chapel Hill.  Lisa speaks very highly of her (and judging by Lisa's kick-ass perfromances this season she must be doing something right!).  I met Stacey briefly at a bike trainer workout at Inside Out Sports a few weeks back.  She impressed me with her enthusiasm and approach, but I initially decided to look elsewhere as I didn't want Lisa to think that I was some type of crazy triathlon stalker!  Thankfully Lisa had no such qualms and highly recommended Stacey so, to cut a long story short, I contacted Stacey, swapped some emails and, hey presto, Stacey has a significant new "project".....   the poor lady has no idea what she has taken on!   :-)

Stacey is part of a local group called Triangle Multisport http://www.trianglemultisport.com/home.html and has her own website at http://tristacey.wordpress.com/.  

I had my first working session yesterday, when I met Stacey on the American Tobacco Trail in Durham and she assessed my limited running capabilities.  Stacey is still recovering from her Ironman Arizona race a couple of weeks back (where she put in a seriously impressive performance!), so she rode her bike whilst analyzing my running.  I was impressed when pretty much the first thing she said was "what's up with your right shoulder?"  - this is the shoulder that I have had problems with since my rugby days and it took Stacey about 0.3 nanoseconds to realise that I hold it lower than the other one when I run.   Stacey went on to identify all sorts of quirks (who knew that I ran with my knees close together and bring my right leg forward differently to my left?).  Judging by the number of different quirks that were identified, watching me run must be much the same as "watching a monkey f#ck a football" (thanks to my  buddie Colford for that one!)  Lots for her to work on!

After the assessment Stacey made me do some stretching exercizes to determine whether she could straighten me out by beating me with a 2 x 4 or whether she would need to do something more serious!   We then adjourned to a local restaurant to discuss how things will work going forward and how Stacey will work with my sometimes crazy travel schedule.  Physiology; nutrition; sleep patterns; psychology etc., etc....  a training geek's paradise.  This is going to be fun!

One of the main vehicles by which Stacey will apparently take control of my entire life is a web based program called Training Peaks http://www.trainingpeaks.com/ .   It's a great program, but the extent to which Stacey can push, pull, prod, yell, spaz out and generally use me as a compliant puppet became really clear this afternoon when a detailed swim workout for tomorrow turned up on my computer screen....  gulp!

Seriously though, Stacey is a hoot and I'm really looking forward to working with her and learning from her amazing knowledge of all things swim, bike and run.  I'm really stoked!

One final thing.....   thanks to Lisa, Stacey is well aware of the existence of this blog, sooooo..... she needs a blog name!  Hmmmm...  so many possibilities....     watch this space!