A couple days after receiving my invitation to participate in the Hawaii Ironman, I hired a coach with a sports training facility called Endurance Mill Valley. I made this decision in part because their training plan involves extensive physiological testing as part of the coaching regime -- think person riding a bike trainer to exhaustion with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. I had been tested by Endurance about 8 months ago, after completing Ironman Coeur D'Alene.

During my initial consultation, I met Jay Courant, a former U.S. Bobsled Team member and a physical therapist. He was assigned the task of doing my physiological testing. Jay asked a couple initial questions about my experience as a triathlete and within a few minutes came to the conclusion that my previous results were impacted by a lack of proper hydration (I do well at short distances, but fade pretty dramatically after a couple hours.) He calculated that my sweat rate was almost triple my fluid intake. Which, is not good, apparently.

Jay and I got along great, so we decided that he would be my coach, though Endurance makes it clear that it views coaching as a team effort involving input from multiple members of the Endurance staff.

The initial testing revealed that, all on my own, over the last 8 months, I had managed to increase my VO2 max (which, I think measures how much oxygen you can process in a minute) from about 52 liters per minute to almost 60 liters per minute. All the interval running I had been doing over the winter paid off. Unfortunately, my test results showed that I had gotten worse with regard to the efficiency with which I used this oxygen.

I also learned that my maximum power was 363 watts, an increase of almost 10% over last year. On a side note, I slipped out of the pedal trying to squeeze out of the last little bit of power, so I'm convinced I had a least another 10 watts in me. Jay wasn't giving credit for "equipment failure", however.

So, loaded down with all this information, Jay developed a one-week coaching plan for me. Because I'm doing the Wildflower half-ironman race in central California on May 5, the plan is basically designed to let me recover enough to do the race. I'm hoping to finish in under 6 hours (last year, I finished in 6:06).

I'm picking up the RV in Oakland today and Laura and I will pack for the trip tonight. More from Wildflower!