You don't need to do it alone

In July, standing at the start line of the 70.3 Ironman Racine event, I was ready for the starter to send my 50-54 age group into the waters of Lake Michigan. The usual pre-race jitters were expected but there was also a nagging sense of waffling confidence. While I had been training for months, family and work responsibilities created a fractured accumulation of time dedicated to swimming, biking and running.

The 1.2-mile swim leg went fine and the transition to the bike felt smooth. But heat and humidity in Racine were reaching an uncomfortable place. By middle of the 56-mile bike leg, the heat index passed 100 degrees. A steady intake of energy gels and hydration aids didn't seem to have the same effect as I experienced on training rides.

By 45 miles, I was sitting under a tree and unsuccessfully trying to coax myself back on the bike. Friendly shouts of encouragement from passing athletes couldn't replace the unsettling sense that my race day was over. Spending time in the medical tent getting intravenous fluids with an increasing crowd of other competitors didn't improve my mood.

Through decades of competition, I've finished triathlons, marathons and long cycling events many times with back of the pack times, but I've never had to see DNF ("did not finish") next to my name in the results.

My goal of building on my 70.3 training to compete in the full distance Ironman Wisconsin in September 2012 didn't seem as certain as it did earlier. Questioning the effectiveness of a training plan cobbled together from magazines, online resources and iPhone apps lead me to consider hiring a professional coach.

Brian Vande Krol, a certified swim coach, explains how coaching could help me address the issues I had with the heat and humidity.

"Now we have more data about how you perform in the heat," he said. "We can do certain things to adjust your training plan so that next time you are faced with that kind of heat you will be able to anticipate the problems it can create and know how to handle that. Triathlon training is really an adventure in self-discovery. Dealing with heat is not a defeat. It's more information about how to do better on the next one."

Letting go of that race is the first thing I need to do, according to Jeff Kline, founder of PRS Fit and a certified triathlon coach. Commenting on my self-coached training, Kline said, "That approach didn't work for your because you didn't have someone on the outside saying to you on Monday you are doing this workout because X. A coach gives you an outside perspective and objective opinion."

Vande Krol added, "A coach can understand what it actually means to train for your event. A lot of triathletes if left to their own devices would keep doing the same thing until it gets easier. That's a bad idea. A coach will help you understand the paces that are appropriate for a certain workout. That's a different kind of workout than going out and running the same distance. It helps you train with specific systems so you have a better ability to go faster, easier or longer as well as making the workouts more interesting."

Kris Swarthout, director of events for OptumHealth Performance and a USA Triathlon certified coach and competitor, said, "Lots of people see the '12 weeks to your best half Ironman' article in a magazine. A coach will create something specifically for you and take into account an athlete with a 9-to-5 job and a family. A coach will prescribe a training plan based on the athlete's strengths and weakness and their goals."

The benefits of hiring a coach make sense, but I still have to ask the question: Is it worth my while to have a coach? Swarthout answers the question with a question. "Would you ask your neighbor to give you financial advice? Or are you going to hire a professional financial advisor? Same concept goes for triathlon. Think about the money, time, effort and how much of your soul you are going to put into the sport. You need to have someone who is a professional, takes this seriously and is going to devote their time to you."

Daily and weekly interaction between coach and client reinforces the training programs and fuels the fire. "You create a relationship where the coach has a vested interest in the athlete to help them be as good as they can be and achieve as much as they can," Swarthout said. "If an athlete doesn't believe they can do it, they won't do it. Most people can do so much more than they believe they can. It's the coach who has the outside perspective that can guide you through the forest of under- or over-training."

Swarthout continued. "The first step is defining the goal. Second is defining the amount of time you have to achieve that goal. If the athlete believes they can do it, it's the coach's job to create an atmosphere of winning and to enable the athlete to believe in themselves in the darkest days of training when they think things aren't going so well. When the trust is there. Anything is achievable."

Now that some time has passed and the letdown of my DNF is fading, my reticence about registering for a full Ironman distance is fading, too. Why not hire a coach and go for it?

Vande Krol supports that point of view. "That's a much better attitude than accepting defeat and saying I've failed at this race and probably should move on to a sport like bowling."

Lou Dzierzak is a freelance writer who has covered the outdoor recreation beat for more than a decade.