Lindsay's Testimonial

My triathlon journey began in the summer of 2018 when I entered the LakesMan 70.3; having never done a Tri, never swam in open water and not even owning a road bike (not quite sure what I was thinking?!)

I’ve written a blog elsewhere on Pauls website about my journey from disaster in 2019 to finally becoming a LakesMan in 2021, but this is a testimonial about Paul and our last 12 months together.

My original plan was to conquer my 70.3 demons first, then find a coach to help me complete a 140.6 in 2022. I didn’t know Paul personally but I knew who he was through the LakesMan Journey Facebook group. I’d seen his own success at the event, read the sound advice he often gave others and had even been on the receiving end of it. In early 2021 (when I was around halfway through the Fink plan) I heard on the grapevine that Paul had started doing coaching, so I dropped him a message and the first thing he replied was “where did you hear that?”. I genuinely can’t remember how I heard but it turned out Paul had only very recently started official coaching. Paul had a couple of clients who he was coaching as part of the practical element of his qualification and I think I turned out to be “client no 5”.

Initially we discussed me signing up later in the year, but after 90 minutes chatting on the phone I decided this was a bloke I could really get along with; I liked what he had to say and so I signed up in March 2021.

Paul’s style of coaching very much works for me. While he follows tried and tested methods it is certainly not one size fits all. After determining where I was, where I wanted to be and how much time I could realistically commit to training Paul came up with a bespoke plan designed to fit me and my lifestyle. If I need to make changes to my plan we do, it’s structured but flexible too!

We speak (via WhatsApp) more or less every day. I like that Paul checks in on me but without making me feel like he’s scrutinising my every move (even though I know he has notifications setup for when we start Zwifting or we finish a workout!). If I’ve smashed a turbo session or PR’d a run segment I get a text within probably an hour or so telling me how great I did. At the same time if I miss a session or have a terrible workout I get a “what happened?”; yet it always feels like genuine concern and not a telling off from teacher 😂

He’s always there to answer any questions and works with me to help solve and problems (and I’ve given him plenty of conundrums over the last year 🙈); I think it helps that wears both “data geeks”.

When I caught Covid in week 1 of my LakesMan 140.6 plan Paul had to completely rethink my first 10 weeks of training (see Covid Recovery Blog!). He again tailored my plan and as it turned out, we’ve not only managed to improve my running technique and get rid of injury niggles but I’m now faster than we planned I’d be!

There have been times I’ve looked at my plan and thought “no way can I run that fast/do that power output for that long” but Pauls response has always been “I would never put anything in your plan that I didn’t think you could do” and he’s right! Every race I’ve done whether it’s swimming, running, triathlon and even some virtual Zwift races, I’ve done them at or slightly under Pauls prediction.

In the last year Paul has helped me:

- Increase my FTP by 20%, 🚴‍♀️💥

- Increase my CSS swim pace by 25s/100m, 🏊‍♀️💨

- Achieve a Half Marathon PB 1:57 (first time under 2hrs and he ran it with me!) as well as 10k and 5k PBs 🏃‍♀️💨 , and

- Finish LakesMan 70.3 almost 90 minutes under where I was expecting to be when I first signed up with him.

Whatever his magic is it works and my results attest to that. He would say “but it’s you who puts the hours in” and he’s right, but without him I’d be ambling around aimlessly with not a clue what I was doing and oblivious to what a pahr metric is 🤔