One of the key differences between being an athlete and being a coach is the concept of flexibility. To be successful as an athlete, you need to possess inflexibility - a singular, bull headed passion to succeed, to overcome any obstacle. Without this inflexibility an athlete can not truly push themselves to the limits in races. They'll cute workouts short, miss them completely, or rationalize skipping stretching/icing/strength drills, etc. As a coach you must behave in a completely different mindset. You've got to set long term plans, but then adapt them to current situations. If a workout isn't going well you might have to change the rest or if it's windy throw the times out the window and strive for the right "effort". Scheduling conflicts arise, you work around them. Countless other situations.
Today was such a day. The problem - Weather. Both today and tomorrow we'll have very low temperatures, today freezing rain, tomorrow a light snow. Realizing that the track was unusable today, I was initially going to try to force the workout tomorrow in only slightly better conditions. Luckily though, I have a wonderful team of coaches around me, and eventually one of them brainstormed - why not just have one large "ball buster" workout on Wednesday for the week (in addition to Saturday's races) when the temperature will be in the 50's? Eureka! Such a better idea.
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