The pre-testing jitters...

So I'm going out to Seattle this weekend to meet with my coach Todd Herriott, and I am dreading it. I'll be paying a visit to Todd's place of work called Herriott Sports Performance (HSP for short), where not surprisingly Todd is the head honcho. While I'm there I'll be getting a slew of physiological tests to better determine how to craft my training plan, and I'll have Todd adjust my aerodynamic position on my TT bike, but most importantly, I'm going there to have Todd give me the "straight talk". Todd is a ball-buster, no way around it. He's a good coach for me, because he doesn't dandy up what he says with a bunch of supportive, positive, everybody-can-be-a-winner fanciness. No, he'll be brutally honest. He's been around and seen it all long enough to know that a guy like me - a talented athlete, but not a complete and total mutant - needs to work REALLY REALLY hard in order to be successful, especially when I'm competing mostly against other talented athletes (and the occasional total mutant), almost all of whom also work REALLY REALLY hard. He's going to get me up on those machines, and poke my finger with a needle, and make me pedal until I want to puke, and then look at the data and say something like "Sam, you're a big unit. Your [insert physiological statistic] is good, and if you do what I tell you to do it will get better. If you don't get better, you'll never be able to bark with the big boys, so do what I tell you, ok."

"Do I have to stop drinking lots of beer and eating lots of ice cream," I'll ask.

"Only if you want to get faster," he'll say.

This is why I'm dreading it.