tetonrider

the d&d comment was a nice touch; you know i agree with you on the amateur/hobby nature of the sport. i also get where gsteinb's coming from re: how your posts present themselves. i don't see gsteinb denigrate those who choose not to hire a coach, but your posts appear to belittle those who do. like gsteinb, i don't know why that is because you otherwise seem reasonable.

here's one place where i think the "if i can do it anyone can" argument falls a bit flat: weren't you saying you raced something like 80 or 100 times in 2014 or 2013?

much respect to you, but you're probably not representative of the average. someone who races 100x in a year has dedicated a huge chunk of themselves to their hobby. that is commendable that you did it.

maybe you're more awesome than you realize? or maybe you're far more hard-working than you give yourself credit for? either way, the conclusions the same.

one might say "well, everyone can enter a ton of races and improve," but that may not actually be an option for many, short of disassembling the rest of their life.

in theory, you, mattm, might be able to amass the same level of knowledge as, say, someone who has an advanced degree in a complex field, say, computational neuroscience, but it might put a damper on other things in your life. or you could pay for some help and probably​ get there a bit quicker...if you're average.

Racer Ex 

Not to really argue about self coaching (I'm doing this myself at the moment) or denigrate the Cat 1 thing (I'm one myself), but that's not really a great indicator of how well you've self coached if you're a sprinter doing crits and that's where you got your points, which is really a lot of the USAC model for advancement. Fast be fast and I've seen a lot of out of shape sprinters win stuff at the local level in 1/2 crits.

Critical power numbers, performance in longer/multi day events, TT's, Etc. are a much better indicator of whether you're doing a good job. Even more so what you're putting up at the end of longer races, and if you're able to win out of breaks, make bridges, kilo out the field, Etc. And if you're always there at the end, whether it's a 75 minute crit or 100 mile road race.

Like sex, you can coach yourself. Like sex you might do it better with help. Hard to know without trying it both ways and even with a few different people. But yes, you certainly can do it yourself and there's more and more technology out there to make it easier and more pleasurable.

But nothing beats this Training Peaks deal, I'm tellin ya.

revchuck 

Isn't that redundant?

<running and ducking, searching for hard cover>

tetonrider

just mentioning this disclaimed because you bring up gsteinb, passive-aggressive buzzwords & stuff that i don't care much about and don't want to get involved in:
[disclaimer]
though i see value in coaching and i do coach some people, i've never once asked to coach a person (at least not yet), so i don't much care what people choose to do as long as it makes them happy.
[/disclaimer]

anyway, i just wanted to comment on the $300/mo thing. i think this is where value comes into play, and value is relative. do you realize how many people think that amount is nothing? it's shocking. it's definitely not nothing to me, for sure.

here's an example:
got a text last sunday--does my kid want to be in a ski lesson with a private instructor with our friend's kid. they're 5. sure--it's basically a play-date. (my kid will wind up skiing 50, 60 days this year with me....mostly because i like spending time with him but also because i can teach him more than most instructors who teach kids that age.)

that kid's parents paid $850 (+lunch + tip) for those six hours. turns out they had their kid with that instructor for the entire week, while my son was with me.

that same week, a friend who spends part of the year here shot me a note asking if i wanted to ski with him on wednesday from 9-noon. (i didn't...i was skiing with my son.) he hired an instructor just to cut a few lines. same cost....$1k+.

and that's just a side little thing.

$300/month? that's nothing! if the 8-hour a week cyclist you described told these people that they pay $300/month for coaching, they would absolutely laugh at how little that was.

it might be a poor value to you or a great value to you. it presumes that there is SOME value, of course, but the rest is just based on how much disposable income someone has.

Ygduf

ITT:


I'm not reading replies because I'm not getting sucked in. You all please feel very secure in your purchasing decisions. It's not my skin! I very specifically and explicitly made no comment about coaching.

tetonrider

i've heard that lots of world tour riders have won on bread & water. they wouldn't lie right? i mean, wasn't it lance who just told us to ride more?

what if it turns out that @mattm and @Ygduf are actually being coached??? i mean how would we know? it's not like there's any precedent of the biggest deniers being the biggest users, right?

it would be the bikeforums scandal of the year!

would be kind of funny, actually.

(just kidding, guys. i know you have good senses of humor.)

(i do like the intellectual discussion around the value of things/services....was a field of study of mine and remains a curiosity.)

gsteinb

That's kind of funny, because no one was talking to you…you inserted yourself as if I was talking to you, and now you're bailing out claiming the high ground.

tetonrider

largely represents any comments by the general public on the internet. might as well be entertained as we circle the drain.

Racer Ex 

It's a fudge swirl.

mattm

70 in 2013; only 40 last year b/c of injury. Yes, it's a lot. In WA I raced ~45 times a year and they said that was "a lot" too. It's really relative to where you live I think (i.e. how much racing is available to you)

And fwiw racing a lot isn't some easy gateway to upgrading; I know guys around here that race just as much as me and don't appear to be progressing.

Of course some people don't have time for lots of racing & training; but if you don't, then I don't really see a point in hiring a coach in order to get to the next level anyway, really. If you're just dabbling, why pay extra? (blanket statement, I know, and not aimed at anyone)

I give myself plenty of credit for being hardworking, and more motivated than a mother****er. =]

Above average, probably. But my athletic genes can't be that great.. I've posted my power #'s here, no genetic greatness I'm pretty sure. =]

Mainly lots of motivation and hard work.

Nonetheless my main thrust here is for an outsider (googlers, beginners, etc) they might read all the coachers/coachees posts and think "well I need a coach to do anything in racing obviously", so I want to offer a counterpoint to that. And yes I like to include barbs along with my opinion sometimes!

mattm

So you're calling me a fat sprinter. Hah!

The more I race, the more I realize I'm not a "sprinter" at all. Last season I made a podium or two from the break, lapped the field in a break.

The "sprints" that I did win were more like last-lap splintering of the field and coming out on top, not classic drag races.

Room for improvement? Of course. There's always room for that.

This season when I do NCC crits I'll probably find more room for improvement than I ever knew existed!

Anyway; just b/c one isn't hiring a coach, does it mean they aren't trying to improve?

tetonrider

i neither said nor implied that racing a bunch is an easy gateway. my earlier point was that if someone reads your comments ("hey i did it/you can too!") they don't have any context around just how much you really race, and we all know that while not an easy path racing 70x in a year doesn't reduce one's chances for points. down below, you say your posts are for the googlers, so of course you know you're not giving them that info.

road racing is just a low-probabilty thing (for anyone who is in the right category); rolling the dice as many times as possible eventually rewards a risk-taker.

in terms of the amount you race (and quite possibly motivation and ability--i don't know about the latter), you are more like the exception than the rule. i just used the sheer # of times that you raced as one example to illustrate it.

so, that's where it gets confusing.

why go to a great sushi restaurant instead of california rolls at the grocery store? strava racer, cat 5, cat 3, cat 1 or domestic pro who is not actually getting paid but maybe gets to sell his bike frame at the end of the year -- more similar than different.

by your statement you seem to be either judging racers who are "just dabbling"?

to the true professional, your riding is a joke. (no offense to you of course--anyone who is a level above tends to look down on those just one step below. just look at any mixed-cat race where the higher level riders blame the lower levels ones for all the crashes.) they might laugh at you riding 20h/week (+ all the extra time associated with riding).....to be a cat 1? why bother putting that much energy if you are not going to get paid for it?

(this is not my opinion as i think hobbies are worth pouring one's time and energy into. many people never find a single passion in life.)

for some, they might look at the value of your time and it would be laughable (i.e. way way more) compared to what many pay for coaching.

let's just say the value of your time is $50/hour with fudgy paying $300/mo, if you saved just 6h a month you'd break even. could a coach be a rational economic decision for some? sure!

$100/hour all-in with benefits and such? jeez...if a coach saves SIX MINUTES A DAY then the service has been paid for.

for the grad student living on ramen making $10k a year but with more free time, maybe it's harder to justify.

again, not saying this is you at all, and in no way am i saying everyone needs a coach--just that you seem to be mixing in more judgement than you let on with your remarks. just trying to put some context around the value.


not sure if our readers were worried about this one. ;-)


coaching is no replacement for this. we'll of course never know how much further or behind you might be with a coach.

i'm going to bet that your confidence and your ego are an asset in your racing. sometimes even world tour pros lose this edge. sometimes their coach helps them remember what they are capable of.

along your journey, did you ever spend any time doing the wrong thing? none? great.

pretty sure nobody thinks that. so few people wind up in the racing forum and so many more are in the regular road forum (they get more traffic and would be higher up on the search engines), and we're just a very small corner of the internet.

if you're truly worried about the benefit of the beginners and googlers, you'd spend more time there....and you might provide some context. otherwise, you might actually be doing them a [I]dis[I]-service because they didn't realize that the guy telling them they can be just like him made his life revolve around cycling for years.

i don't fully believe all of that, but it is another perspective on what you've said.

doing it to help "the googlers" is super-nice, but seems unlikely--it's not like you wrote a tutorial on helping someone get to the next level of a video game. y'know, like what someone might actually search for.

tetonrider

how'd you get that from Ex's post? no one's ever said that in any thread about coaching.

it's all about what one wants to spend their money on and what someone sees as having value.

we could be debating @bmcphx's cannondale's value, but all that matters is whether he wakes up in the morning and is fired up to ride it.

Enthalpic

These threads should be used to teach undergrads about cognitive dissonance.

What complicates the issue is that there are way too many uneducated, unqualified self-appointed coaches. Likewise there are several types of athletes some of which would be high responders to coaching (great genes, great discipline/motivation, dumb as a brick) and other who would not respond very well (poor genes, poor discipline, Phd in Ex physiology). To really determine the value of coaching we would at least need to set up a 2x3 matrix and then honestly assess both the coaches and athletes abilities / traits.

mattm seems talented, motivated and educated - it would take a excellent coach to help him in any way; a crap self-appointed coach would probably hurt his results or just waste his money. Juniors like puppy absolutely need qualified coaches, like ones hired by top teams or district/national organizations. I'm not saying that all self-employed coaches suck, I just expect them to use client case studies - not their own results - as evidence that they know what they are doing.

Racer Ex 

Time for training and time for racing are usually two different things. Day job stuff. If you have limited training time (and presume limited time to do research, set a schedule, review your data, Etc) then that might be the BEST reason to get a coach. Pay someone to clean your house so to speak.

Most of my folks have time constraints. The tell me how many hours (or minutes) they have on what day, race/season goals, Etc. They get a weekly plan that gets adjusted as things change.

If you have 8 free hours a week, you're better off training 8 than 6 and spending the other two trying to set out a plan. And if you earn at a certain level it's actually cost effective.

Come the weekend you have a nice clean house and can go have fun instead of wiping down the toilet.

One of those I did 348w for 45m. Tail gunning.

Fun watching all the kids who blew up going backwards past me though.

If it does, then I've thrown in the towel.

If you're informed enough and disciplined enough to coach yourself, and have the time, have at it. As noted that's what I've been doing for a bit. But like learning any sport or skill most folks can benefit, especially early on, from help.

Shaun White probably didn't need a snowboard lesson. But he's Shaun White. The rest of us needed someone to tell us how to buckle our bindings.

What gets forgotten by the folks who have made it through to the 1/2 stuff or survived 4 years in the sport is that the attrition rate in cycling is massive. Huge. I can count on one hand the folks I started racing Cat 5 with who are still racing with me. Think about it.

On the other hand every person I've coached is still racing.

What grates on me as much as anything is when newbies ask about getting a coach. The very question is telling; they are floundering and confused. And the default answer they get is no?

"Hey, I want to learn how to fly a plane". There will always be one self taught pilot who is oblivious to the 100 people who crashed and died who's answer to that question is "just read the book, it's easy".

Go do a survey of Cat 1's and I'll bet a cheap knock off set of carbon bars (Zlipps) that at least 85% have worked with a coach at some point.

bmcphx

Wait, what are you dragging me into @tetonrider?

Racer Ex 

But I gave USAC $80 and took their online quiz! It says I know stuff! And I'm working for CTS! (Not damning them all with the same brush, it can be hit or miss from what I've seen)

Er, no I didn't. And I'm not. Actually need to do the USAC cert for the additional liability coverage. Been meaning to get to that.

Part of what you wrote is the engineering supervisor syndrome. Promote your best engineer to supervise others and you often end up with a horrible supervisor. Different skills sets. Great athletes can be clueless as to why they are great athletes. For every Ted Williams there's a Yogi Berra.

And even great coaching technicians can be thwarted by the athlete. Bjarne Riis v. Carlos Sastre. It's an art because you're dealing with people, and people are different. Dealing with smart, high achievers is a challenge not because of the client, but because you better not come in with weak s***.

Probably ought to write a book on this. Mostly because if you write a book, even a bad one, chicks dig you and people think you know stuff. And you can charge a lot a month.

revchuck 

Matt - You're assuming that everyone has access to the same number of races you do. I'm speaking for myself, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one in this situation - it just ain't so. My race season starts in late February. Most of the races available to me are stage races, and involve driving 100-400 miles each way. I'll do about one per month due to the expense (gas, two nights in a motel, etc.). That's almost every race on my LA's calendar. I'm not dabbling, I'm racing as much as I can. Another fact bearing on the problem is that my RA is 64, and I'm a fairly new racer. I don't have time to learn to train and race solely by experience. A good coach helps enormously in compressing the learning curve.

bmcphx

I did almost every race within a two hour drive and raced multiple races at crits, I think 16 races last year? There aren't that many to dedicate your life to.

revchuck 

Well, I fit one of the three...

tetonrider

hey @racerEx..... check this from wednesday. great minds and all that.

tetonrider

just missed you a bit, that's all.

tetonrider

i think there are a bunch of people in these threads who talk about not just good coach v. bad coach but the proper coach-athlete fit.

sometimes a great coach + great athlete just doesn't work.

we've had threads on the very topic of how to select a coach. that in itself can be tough. with the # of coaches out there, a newbie picking at random doesn't stand much chance. you are absolute right about the barrier being low. doesn't mean that someone without a degree in ex. science is bad, nor does such a degree guarantee anything. coaching involves so many soft skills (anyone left out there who seriously thinks that TSS & CTL tell you all you need to know about an amateur athlete's future performance?) that are missed by credentials.

unlike being a "certified social media expert". (i've seen people pay for such a "credential." )

and i fully agree that the coach's own athletic prowess is one of the worst (but perhaps most often used) reasons for selecting a coach. doesn't mean that they all are bad but that is not the reason to choose them.

if we're having a discussion where some people are assuming an incompetent coach, then the whole thing is pointless.

to your matrix point, i see it as client learning style vs a coach's teaching style. IME clients usually have a distinct style to which they respond best. also IME some coaches have one style while others are more adaptable.

Racer Ex 

Ayup. USAC is run by folks who were born on third base and thought they hit a triple. Like golf, they got a huge surge from a compelling athlete showing up during a booming economy, and figured it was because they were brilliant. If you did a search on "retention" in the minutes (if they actually keep records) for USAC or any of their LA's you'd come up with "not found"

Sort of like what's happened on several occasions recently when people looked for the money in some of the USAC LA bank accounts.

Oooopsie.


I would rather have an AMC Pacer seat cover than a canned training plan btw. At least I might be able to sell it on Ebay.

carpediemracing 

I'm still surprised that USAC would offer free coaching to their racers. It's another example of stepping out of their sports federation position and into the private sector. The other obvious one being the online registration. I'm not familiar with many of the other "benefits".