A Proud Moment

I don't make it a practice to brag...I try to let my feet do the talking. Every once in awhile I do mention one of my athletes here. We do group tri training through Rogue Running. We work with a small group of dedicated athletes. I posted about one of them a couple of weeks ago as he was one of the top age groupers at the Xterra Regional race. Another one a year ago who had a big time IM PR after a 45 minute flat tire stop. I don't think that I posted about a third who set an IM PR and broke 11 hours last November b/c I had just left SE and took a few athletes with me. Several in our Rogue group had 15-20 minute PRs at CapTex as well. And yeah, there are no real PRs in triathlon, but we'll go with it. There are others, but those are the ones that really stick out right now.

Anyway, another athlete of mine just won Lubbock. It's a bit strange b/c we really started out as coach/athlete and even when she asked me out under the guise of it being a 'thank you dinner' I was still operating as 'all business.' Two weeks later we went out on a date...the rest is history.

After 5 years of coaching, turning pro in June 2006, finishing 7th at ITU Long Course Worlds in 2007, and then battling almost 2 years of Plantar Fasciitis and a stress fracture, Amy got all healed up and racing this year. She was 2nd in New Orleans when she had a flat, took a while to change it, and soldiered on to finish 3rd to last female pro. 2 local wins later, a 4th at 70.3 Florida and 70.3 Kansas...it was off to Lubbock. She won...I already blogged it.

Anyway, you can read an interview on slowtwitch.com here.

It's easy to coach a good athlete...she did go to swimming trials. But, it is still a good feeling to have an athlete with loads of talent who puts in loads of hard work finally see the results. I blogged about it before. There are no real secrets to having a successful race or season or lifetime of racing. Every athlete that we've worked with, whether olympic trials swimmer or weekend warrior, generally has one thing in common...they get the workouts done and the results show it. We're working on our Team-Marsh website to highlight some of our racing, training, and coaching options...if you are interested!!

Congrats to Amy on a the start of the season that we knew she had in her.

Oh yeah...this weekend the Hy-Vee triathlon is on TV. It's Sunday and it follows Wimbledon (?) on NBC at 2pm. Tune in for one of the most exciting triathlon finishes I've ever seen...we were watching it last weekend in the hotel at Lubbock.