I’d known Glyn for a number of years before he started coaching me and I knew his experience and insight would be massively helpful for what I wanted to achieve, so I approached him and we met and discussed how it would work and what we were going to do. Glyn asked about my life, my commitments, previous training experience, racing and everything else that was important and went about putting together a plan.
What impressed me most was how he took my feedback and impression of how the sessions were going and made adjustments to the plan – it was totally collaborative. I became ill during the season so we talked through it and Glyn adjusted the plan so I could recover and start training properly as soon as possible. Fitting everything around the rest of life made it easy to get the most of my training without overdoing it before races.
When it came to races, Glyn’s experience was invaluable. We talked in depth about gearing and pacing strategy and how to race hill climbs to make the most of my strengths. We made improvements to basic things like getting a good warm up and knowing how to get into the best frame of mind for the climb.
The results we got out of this process were better than I expected, showing just how effective Glyn’s coaching was for me. I went 10-15% faster on climbs I had raced before with a personal highlight being at the University of Bristol event. More importantly, I found that I was enjoying the season and participating more because of the sense of purpose and enjoyment I got from Glyn. Saying that racing hill climbs is fun seems like a strange thing to say but that’s exactly how it felt. At the end of the season I was accepted into the National Championships, which was beyond my highest expectations for the year and down to the time Glyn invested in me and my training.