Fraser Darcy

Hi all,

It’s been about a month of coaching through FinalSurge and as I alluded to to some people over email, I plan on value adding to your experience as a client with occasional tidbits of information. The best way I’ve come up with getting information like that across to you is via some form of newsletter like this… so welcome to the first one of many hopefully!

These newsletters will relate to general questions around training, racing and also how to get the most out of your service (A.K.A how to get the most value from me!). The newsletters will be posted on my website, ideally every month, and I’ll link to them on the Message Board so you can quickly refer back to previous issues if you need to without having to trawl through the internet or your email inbox to look for a link.

Agenda Items:

• Message Boards
• Workout Notes/Comments/Pain Reports
• Time v Distance
• Phone Call times
• Remaining coaching spots

Message Boards: Starting off with an easy one. I have created one obviously for the Newsletter and linked both the Coaching and Program ‘teams’ to them but I can create more topics specific to races and training topics. There is also the Social Wall which is a bit more fun environment I believe similar to a mix of Facebook/Strava. Feel free to use either of those environments if you have a question you think other people might benefit from or you have something cool in running to share specific to this group of people (about 16 at the moment and maybe a few more soon but more on that below).

Workout Notes/Comments/Pain Reports: So far this is my favourite feature of coaching via FinalSurge and one of the main factors in switching to this platform. I enjoy seeing the honest reflections from runners after a good or poor run and also know from personal experience that this reflection is important in believing in your training. A lot of times our ‘head noise’ in a session is telling us that the run is overly hard but at the end of the session we often reflect and think it wasn’t actually that bad and give ourselves a pat on the back. This is consistent with what I’m seeing in the Post Workout Notes and also comments.

As a rough guide, if you do a run and update the post workout notes or leave a comment I’ll likely get back to you with a reply unless your notes were something short along the line of ‘All good’. If you wrote ‘Struggled hard. Took a break. Felt like my hamstring was getting tight but then it cleared‘ that’s definitely something I’ll get back to you so if I don’t after 24hrs as gone by then give me the equivalent of a kick up the a** over the internet. I’ve been playing around with my notifications of these comments and after missing a couple over the weekend I think I’ve got it dialled now.

The Pain and Injury Report. If you have a small niggle or roll your ankle in a run, please try and leave a little report. Even if it’s nothing. We all get niggles and you might leave one saying ‘pain in between my thighs‘ from ‘80% to end’ and all it is is some untimely chafe. But, if there’s a consistent trend for a few days then that’s good evidence to take a rest day. Same goes with if you update the post workout notes and report feeling ‘Poor‘ or ‘Terrible‘ for a few days in a row. And it can work the other way too, training might be too easy for too long! The more notes/comments you can leave, the more it helps me to get the full picture of how you’re going.

Time v Distance: This has been one of the best questions so far with programming. Some times I leave a distance to aim for, some times a distance and a time, and some times just a time. What is the best one to aim for? It depends…

• If you’re feeling good, it doesn’t really matter but you have a licence to go for the longer option. Eg. If I’ve put 6km and 30 minutes, and you’re feeling good you might run the 6km’s in 28 minutes. It’s cool if you want to go out to 30mins.
• If you’re feeling average, stick to the shorter option. Eg. If you get to 30minutes and have only run 5.8km’s then stop there.

Another helpful factor in deciding what to aim for is to think ‘what is the overall picture with this run, what does Fraser want me to do?’. If it’s a recovery run of 25 minutes and you’re feeling good and decide to cover 5km’s in 18 minutes well then maybe that’s not a great example of going the longer option because you’re not actually achieving the goal of the run. See how ‘it depends’… is important?

So, if you are unsure about what metric to adhere to, think of the big picture of how that run relates to your training, think about how you’re feeling both before and during the run and then think about what training you have the next day. If you have a gut intuition about how far to run after all that, listen to it! And if you are still unsure, ask me, that’s what you pay me for! And sorry if I’ve confused you anymore!

Phone Call Times: If you’re on the ‘Basic Coaching’ option then picking up your telephone and giving me a buzz once a month and before/after races is welcomed! The best times to aim for are:

• Monday afternoons/evenings (anytime outside of 5-7pm)
• Tuesday midday hours (11am – 2pm)
• Wednesday midday hours (11am – 2pm)
• Thursday midday hours + afternoons/evenings (anytime outside of 5pm-7pm)
• Friday midday hours (11am – 2pm)
• Weekends, anytime after 11am.

It was great to get a heads up text message from one runner earlier this week who asked if it was ok to call me in one of the times above. I unfortunately was busy at the exact time they suggested but we found another time that worked easily enough. That’s a great process as if I haven’t had any heads up about a phone call during the day then I’ll probably fiddle with my schedule and so mightn’t be available at all of these times anymore.

Remaining Coaching Spots: It’s only a month in and I’ve already been stoked with the take-up so far of people for this service. That’s without any advertising besides word of mouth so thank you to those who have recommended me! I’ve got a handful of people keen to begin coaching in June and after they sign on there’s only a limited number of spots left (let’s say 5 depending on how many people who are ‘keen’ actually sign on) so if you have any other friends thinking about signing up then tell them not to leave it to late.

Being optimistic, let’s imagine it gets to the point where the roster is ‘full’ and you decide you want to ‘pause’ coaching, what happens to your ‘spot’? Most likely, I’ll keep it available for you for a few months. If I was in your position I’d want the opportunity to have a break from coaching for a few months, do my own thing for a bit and then get motivated and lock in for another few months before an A race. So, I’m keen to offer that to people and would like them to feel comfortable in knowing that I support them having a few weeks or a month or so off coaching. It’s like having annual leave in the work place I guess, not to make running feel like your work and me your boss.

Any Other Business: First newsletter is in the books! I do take submissions as well for topic ideas so don’t be shy if you have a question or something you’d like discussed. At this stage I’m thinking a brief rundown on: Tempo v VO2 v Lactate Threshold v Fartlek v Hills v Marathon Pace will be the next most pertinent topic in the next newsletter, but if there’s something YOU want discussed first then let ME know.

Thanks,

Fraser