I've got a question for people regarding coach/client interaction. To provide some background, I signed up with a new coach a few weeks ago. I've been impressed with this person's sense of me as a rider and what I seem to respond to best. In fact, right away they were able to get me out of what felt like a big flat period. The workouts are challenging but I'm enjoying them a great deal and feel like I'm getting stronger.

However, the email contact with this person has been less than consistent and I'm not certain how to address it. The arrangement is for "unlimited email contact", but when I only send a few I would hope for better responses than I am receiving.

Here are some examples of the type of thing going on.
(1) sometimes I get responses right away (same day). At other times it takes 3-4 days to hear back.
(2) Some questions don't get answered at all even after waiting for those 3-4 days. Well they are more like half-answers. I'll ask something specific like "today my legs felt like bricks and I was essentially completely cooked after about 50% of the ride." I'll continue with a few specific observations and then say that I'd like to discuss X, Y, Z with him. the answer I get back is "are you squared away?" then a bit later "you are adapting to a new program". No details or any comments on X,Y, Z.

(3) I'm supposed to get a weekly analysis of my power files. When I don't hear from this person, I send a brief email like this: "Last week's sprint workout went well, but it was tough. What do you think about aspect A and B? I'd like to know also what you thought about the change in power from sprint #1 to sprint #n. how does that compare with previous data?" No response.

(4) This person said we were scheduled to talk once a week but no conversation happened last week. They even said initially they would be willing to talk a bit more to help me get adjusted to the program. Even so, the scheduling has been off. On more than one occasion we have scheduled a specific time to chat. This person doesn't call at the appointed time. So I emailed them later asking when we can chat. The response "I didn't realize we had set a time I thought we were just talking about it. I have been in front of the computer for 6 hours and I would like to go to the gym now. I can call when I get back from the gym". I went back to my emails an verified that we did set up a specific time in spite of what they said.



Is there a way to address this with the coach if I generally like the program but I am concerned about this other stuff? I don't want to alienate this person by coming off as critical. However, for what I am paying, I'd expect a bit more than I am getting. Am I being unreasonable in my expectations? For me, the value added of a coach is the email interaction to help me understand the data and how my body is responding. If the email isn't providing that, I wonder if I should go back to something I did last year where I just did Hunter Allen's preplanned programs from trainingpeaks.com. I got in good shape last fall by doing that...