About To Become An Official Coach

I'm here in Colorado this week to go through USAT's Coach certification program, thus making me finally an "official" (or at least certifiable) coach. I've been doing the coaching gig for many years, but am looking forward to making it a bigger part of my life.They keep us hopping here, with seminars runnig from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm, lots of good topics to learn about.

In other happy news, I got my invitation today to the National Age Group Championships. I don't think I can make it back to Milwaukee in August, but it's nice to know I qualified again. One of these years I'm actually going to go, I hope. Unfortunately, the year it was in Oregon, I was in Italy. Go figure. But still, I am honored to qualify, and happy that I'm having a good season so far.

I do intend to write up my race report for the Olympic Distance tri that got me the AG win and my slot at Nationals, but I've just been too crazy-busy to get it written yet. Suffice it to say, I had a great race, one of my best, and I'm excited to see what I can do with the rest of the season.

That's all the brief news from here, where I need to get to bed so I can get up early to the seminar.

When You're Going Right and God Tells You to Go Left

For this entire season I've been so excited about the Nationals being here in Oregon again next year, finding a qualifying race, and snagging a slot to go. They're usually in June, when a lot of other good races get going, so I called USAT to find out exactly which weekend in June they would be. They're not, in June that is. They'll be in September next year, mid-September. Mid-September as in right smack in the middle of a family vacation that we've been planning for six months already. Not that I'm complaining really, we're planning on taking the kids on a one-month cycling tour of Italy and that trumps the Nationals any day. But still, it's really disappointing to find out that after all that, I won't be able to go after all.

So it seemed rather serendipitous that the same day I found out about the Nationals date change, I got an email in my inbox saying that the local Team in Training chapter is looking for a triathlon coach. It's something I talked to them about doing a couple of years ago, but at the time they didn't have a local group doing triathlons, just running events. It's a reasonable time commitment, but one I might have a hard time fitting in if I was going to have a serious triathlon season on my hands, and also they're aiming to take a team to the Pacific Crest race, which would've fallen right when I thought Nationals was going to be. So it seems as if maybe I'm being shown a different path for this upcoming season. Maybe one that involves less tri-ing for me, and more tri-ing for other people. I've coached people on and off through the last fifteen years, but not in any large-group format, so this would be an interesting stretch.

To top it off, my neighbor died of cancer last night, she is probably only a decade and change older than I am. It's sobering to think of how quickly all that we take for granted here on earth can be gone. This summer she was riding her bike up our hill with a smile, and now she is somewhere else entirely. It seems like a good time to be giving back for me, so keep your fingers crossed that this opportunity works out!