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New Year, New Coach

File this one under old news. I've been working with a  coach for the past couple months now (since November), but I'm only getting around to posting it now.

For the past two years, my coach has been myself.

That guy sucked, so I fired him.

All joking aside, I did like being self-coached. I learned a ton, nerded out on training literature, and overall found it to be a really good experience. However, at this point I don't have the expertise to take myself where I want to go, fitness-wise. I ran some good races but many more not-so-good races; I need some outside direction to help maximize the former.

So now I'm working with Randy Cox, who is probably the best and most experienced coach in the area. He's the coach of Cincinnati's EarthDrummers racing team, and many of them (including my former Xavier teammate Becky Clark) have had great success with him. In addition, he's coached two local runners in recent years to the half-marathon Olympic Trials standard, so I'm really excited about his ability to get me there.

More than anything, though, I'm most excited to learn from one of top running experts in the city. I'm enough of a dork that I get really pumped about learning, so that I can hopefully begin coaching high schoolers and such when I start teaching one day.
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