Sunday, November 27, 2011

Getting into the swing of things!

So this is my second attempt at writing a blog.  I was doing it a couple years ago when I was raising money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society through my racing.  Why I stopped writing, I don't know; but after a couple seasons away I'm ready to get back to it.

So my goal for this blog, as you can probably guess from the title, is to share what is going on with my mountain bike racing/riding, coaching, and, well, anything else going on that is pretty interesting- there is a good chance that will mainly focus on food.  While its fun to be able to re-tell every race story, I realize that not everyone will understand, nor need to hear the nitty gritty details of every race or ride.  So my hope is to  share what is going on with me and more importantly share the things that I've learned along the way.  Which brings me to the next aspect I'll focus on in my posts- coaching.

For the past few years I've been toying with the idea of getting my USA Cycling coaches license.  I mustered up the motivation, went and ordered the manual, read the whole dang thing, and started to take the online self paced test.  Here's the problem with self-paced anything- way too easy to let it get pushed to the back burner.  Well, after two years of starting to take the test only to let it expire, I finally completed the exam and passed the level 3 coaching exam!  I'm excited for what this new opportunity will bring me and what I can make of it.  While my passion is mountain biking and doing ultra-endurance events, I'm excited to try to work with as many different riders at different levels as I can.  I've talked with friends in the past about what they should to do prepare for events, offered tips on training that worked for me, and of course fielded plenty of questions on recovering from illness/injury (tends to happen being an Athletic Trainer) so I am definitely excited to start a new venture where I can focus on offering this type off assistance and get people excited to get on their bikes and get better at riding their bikes.

Will post again when I have a better idea of what is going on.  Still in the process of getting my own training program established- will be doing 1RM testing and trying to establish HR zones somewhere in the next couple weeks.  Doesn't that just get everyone excited to go ride their bikes?