I’ve been a busy doode since May 1. My travel itinerary:

• Attended St. George to coach our Team and deliver our Four Keys Talk to all race participants. ~80 athletes heard the talk in the Expo.
• Led our Tour of California camp: 16 TeamEN members riding ~400 miles, every stage of the Tour just hours ahead of the pro peleton
• Led our IMUSA Tri-Rally, ~50 campers.
• Attended Coeur d’Alene — 24 TeamEN athletes, team dinner for 35+, ~80+ at our Four Keys talk, all day on the bike and run courses, and behind the finishline, to support our athletes.
• Led our Wisconsin Tri-Rally, ~70 campers. See above.

To be quite blunt, I challenge you to find a single coach in the Ironman® space who has worked so hard to “be there” for his athletes and the Ironman® community. With the exception of the Tour of California (obviously a pay-to-play gig), all of the above has been at no extra cost to anyone, Team or the public. We go out on the road to support our athletes and the Ironman® world. This is just how we roll. And we’re not done yet. Patrick will be at Ironman® USA and Louisville, we’ll both be at Wisconsin, I’m working on another Tri-Rally opportunity on the Arizona course, we’ll be at Arizona and IMFL…and the show just keeps on rolling!

In addition, I’ve been living at the epicenter of what makes Endurance Nation so unique: a virtual triathlon Team with a very solid real world component. When Patrick and I created EN, we were focused on the usual coach-ey type stuff: training plans, coaching, delivery of training support, teaching our athletes…all the stuff that you yourself associated with the word “coach.”

But we woke up one day and found that our athletes had created a “Team” for themselves. Networking, creating friendships, sharing training, racing advice and much, much more. The opportunity to solidify these virtual connections in the real world is just…huge. I strongly believe you won’t find it anywhere else in the Ironman® space and our members will tell you that it’s just as, if not more, valuable as the coach-ey stuff that Patrick and I do.

All I can say is that over the course of the last 10wks I’ve had many opportunities to sit back at the dinner table, or lean against the bar, listen to the conversations, and just observe what my athletes have built for themselves. It’s just…friggin’ cool.

But there have been some costs. Namely, last year I bet the gals that they couldn’t get more than 10 of them to race IMWI’10. Well, I lost, and this is what I’ll be wearing for them, as I cheer them on, all day, at about mile 19 of the run. Yeehaw!!

Semper Do Cool Stuff,
Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Coach