My Coach: Boston Running Center

I've officially decided to register for and run the Hartford Marathon on October 11, 2008. Here we go again with the Marathon. This time I'm doing it safely and under the guidance of the head coach at Boston Running Center.

Having a coach might seem kind of silly. I mean, I'm a middle of the pack runner, why do I need a coach? The thing is, I'm a bit too competitive and a bit too hard on myself and I've always been this way. Hence I overtrain and injure myself. I also do much better when I feel that I'm held accountable for my actions. Still... why not just feel accountable to myself? Well, I'm good at letting myself down - it's a low self esteem thing that I'm constantly working on. The thing is I cannot let anyone else down.

So I decided to go with coaching for a few reasons. The first is that I don't want the responsibility of planning my training schedule. I tend to get really caught up in the planning and do more of that than actually running. Secondly, I want to be held accountable. I want someone there to say, "Janette, you skipped your run on Tuesday. Why?" If I know someone is going to ask that, then I know that I better have a damn good reason. I know that, "Because I wanted to go out for ice cream instead" won't work. Another reason I decided to go with a coach, is because I want to learn more about my body, how it works and how runners train. Since my yoga training I've become really interested in the human body and I want to expand my knowledge.

So far things have been going really well. I have this cool online training log that I fill out and submit to Coach each Sunday and then he sends me a new schedule for the following week either Sunday night or Monday morning. I met with him a few days ago to go over some strength training and running drills and he has me starting with those this week. The working isn't easy this week, but I really like a challenge so I'm excited to see how things turn out.