To perform, don't obey the expert.

Lessons from training like a maniac & exploding my hamstring as reward.

I was obsessed with getting below 11 seconds in the 100 meters.

I had already been training for several years with a burning desire and near obsession to improve my time. But, after a while, I realized that training my ass off was not enough to get to what I wanted.

I needed to train with the best.

The first coach I had was a nice old man. Despite that sprinting was not his specialty, he knew his stuff, specially about middle distance running. And more importantly, he cared about me. So, he possessed some important characteristics that any good coach needs, specially for a newbie like me. However, he lacked an important thing. He didn’t share my desire to improve, and he wasn’t able to channel my motivation. He had coached great athletes before, and for him, I was just another nice guy.

After a couple of years training together, this lack of connection became apparent, and I left him. It was hard, because he was who introduced me to track & field, and I was very grateful for that. I was also aware that I knew almost nothing about sprinting, much less than he did. But I knew one thing, I didn’t want to keep getting angered because he didn’t fulfil my expectations, this was not the way I wanted things to be.

So, I found myself walking this path on my own.

The following years, for one reason or another, I was able to train with some of the most renowned sprint coaches of the Basque Country. Some of them had been training athletes for decades, others had experience working with professional sports teams…

After about 7 years of good training, with a couple of sub 11.10 seconds runs, I was close to achieve my objective. And with the prospect of starting a new season training with Basque Country’s 100-meter world record holder, I was very excited.

This training year is among the hardest thing I have ever done. Apart from working full time in a demanding job, the training was insane. For 8 months, I would wake up in the morning, work until 18:00 (unless there was some delay in some project and need to stay until late…), go home, start my training at 19:00, get kicked out of the track at 22:30, prepare next day’s meals and go to sleep. I would repeat this 5 to 6 times a week and let myself die on Sundays. Additionally, the training were so hard that, at some point in the season, an acidified body, sickness and puking were part of a normal week. I remember doing 3x500 meters all out with full recovery, puking three times and having tachycardia the following day. Not recommended. After 8 months training like this, I was excited to put up some good races.

In my second race, I pulled my hamstring, making a 7 cm hole.

I remember I was crying, lying on the ground when my friends came running worried about me. “I think it’s just a big contracture,” I told them. It was too painful to accept that all this effort had been in vain, that my dream faded in a split second.

“What have I done wrong?” “There is no better coach, and I did everything he told me, what happened?” “Doesn’t life reward the disciplined?” “Is it my fault?” “Is it really my coach good?”… And so on and so on.

The only things certain were that I was lost, the season was over for me, and I would need to be careful if I wanted to fully recover.

Anger is the emotion I remember most vividly. I was angry with the world, with my coach and, even that I wouldn’t recognize it until much later, with myself. Because I was an important part of the problem. I had not taken full responsibility about myself, I just believed that the process would lead to results I desired, and I was comfortable believing that what my coaches said was best.

Even if it was painful, at this point in my life, this wasn’t enough for me to completely change my life direction, only and injury that would completely stop me would make this happen. But anger, as usually does, ignited some changes, I was now decided to take full responsibility and train better and smarter.

This meant that, if the best I knew couldn’t make me better without me getting injured, I would start making questions, looking for solutions and learning about coaching to train myself.

And you? Do you obey experts? Or you take full responsibility?