Originally Posted by
waterrockets
If you don't get a coach, but you race, then you're taking on coaching as another hobby. You might be good at it, or you might suck at it, and you may or may not put enough time into it, but it's best to be intentional about it. I went this route (self-coaching), and had mild success -- enough to make both hobbies more fun.
This is an insightful comment. I can tell from my own experience that coaching isn't something I'm particularly into - it's easy for me to think about what I may be good at or weaker at, and what I want to improve, but prescribing and executing workouts in a systematic way to meet those goals is difficult for me. My experience is that I tend to do okay during the base-building portion of my season, but I really start to lose the plot when it comes time to start building on top of that. I'd be willing to bet that I'm not the only one; by nature, base and threshold work is relatively simple to plan and do. When workouts get more complicated, it starts to feel more like doing a complicated math problem. And I'm not really into those.