Coach Croft

Summer hydration hack: Stop acting like electrolytes have to identify as beverages.

Freeze them + make a slushy.

Eat your sodium with a spoon while making uncomfortable eye contact with the sun.

Checkmate, dehydration.

Thoughts from a coach’s s**tty long run (aka the s**t most coaches don’t share)…

I spent two and a half hours on my feet today. Well… a little more than that, but we’ll get to that part later.

It wasn’t just time on my feet though. I spent that time carrying around an athlete’s email and everything it represented.

I don’t think we give enough credit to cognitive load. Coaching isn’t just writing workouts. Sometimes you carry other people’s fears, frustrations, expectations, and projections. This particular message didn’t stay in my inbox. It came with me on the run. So did the lingering feelings from another athlete.

When you’ve spent hours mentally processing difficult interactions, your brain doesn’t magically set them down because you laced up your shoes. The perceived effort of exercise can absolutely be influenced by that background stress.

The biggest thing about today is that I never made it about proving anything.

I walked. I refilled my handheld at a Fleet Feet water stop (thanks, FF!). I took a detour to Starbie’s and bought a blended mango dragonfruit refresher that completely lied to me about being delicious. I gave two coaching clients unsolicited reviews of it while they checked in. I sat for a few minutes, regrouped, talked myself through it, and then got back to work.

Some runs just go like that. Physically, I was mostly okay. Mentally, it was a grind. The heat and humidity chose violence, and my brain was busy processing things while I worked through the final long run of a cycle that was anything but glamorous.

I think that’s important to remember.

Coaches aren’t immune to the same stressors their athletes face. We don’t coach this way because training is supposed to look perfect. We coach this way because we’ve learned that your body doesn’t exist separately from the rest of your life. Stress is stress. Recovery is recovery. Sometimes the biggest win isn’t running the perfect workout.

Sometimes it’s simply refusing to quit when the day asks more of you than you expected.

Anyway, I’m grateful for the end of this cycle, my group, and the clients who trust me with their training (even when they’re not entirely sure about the method.)