It's Never About the Art, But Rather About the Artist

Jennifer and I were at Targhee Fest (weekend music festival filled with a blues rock genre) and were completely entertained by the personalities on stage. We knew many of them and felt a sort of familiar history with them - a relationship of sorts.

And this reminded me that while the art is what we see and hear, it's the artist that brings us back for more. It's the human relationship behind the art that attract us. And I believe it can be quite similar with endurance coaching.

For example, an athlete can execute a training plan perfectly and still show up to race day underprepared. Not because the numbers were wrong, but rather the lack of information the plan doesn't collect and adjust for. It doesn't know the athlete missed two nights of sleep that week, or that their knee felt off on Tuesday, or that they're carrying stress from work into every interval. A plan is a static object - and athlete isn't.

Programming is the paint. Coaching is the artist. Anyone can have a program built for them by an app. That's the paint - necessary, but inert until someone applies judgment to it. The artist is the one who watches how the athlete responds. The one who adjusts Thursday's session because Monday's data said something the plan didn't anticipate. The one who knows the difference between the athlete being tired and being broken. That distinction doesn't live in the programming. It lives in the relationship.

Because when an athlete needs a different approach for any number of reasons, the plan is adjusted for them, not the other way around. That's not something an athlete can template. It's built session by session, conversation by conversation, over months of working for an person, not a training log.

This is where some athletes get it backwards. They chase the perfect plan - the right periodization model, the right A.I. app, the right algorithm or machine learning, and they think that's the product. It's not. The product is judgment applied consistently over time by both the athlete and someone who knows them and is on their team. Strip the relationship out and they're left with generic programming that happens to have their name on it.

It may get the athlete fit, but it may not get them ready - not in the way that matters when things go sideways on race day.

I'd rather have an athlete operate off a mediocre plan and a coach who knows them cold than a brilliant plan and no one watching. The first one adapts, while the second one often breaks the moment reality stops matching the training calendar.

It's never about the art, but rather about the artist.

Gratefully,

Mark

Team MPI