She came for the paperwork

Michelle Rodriguez texted yesterday to ask if she could swing by and grab her updated training plan in person. Totally routine, she does this sometimes, prefers paper over PDF, which honestly I respect. I said sure, come around two, I’ll have it ready. I made iced tea. I was not prepared for what happened next.

She came for the paperwork

She sat down at the breakfast bar and I walked her through the new plan, the progression, the recovery windows, the adjustments I’d made based on how her body’s been responding this summer

Walking her through it.

. And somewhere in the middle of explaining the interval structure for week six, she just stopped me. Said she’d been having a really hard few weeks. Not physically, physically she’s doing great. But the why-am-I-doing-this question had been creeping back in. The kind of question that sounds small and isn’t. I know that question. I’ve lived that question. And something about the way she asked it, quietly, like she wasn’t sure it was allowed, just opened something up in both of us. We talked for almost an hour. About what she’s actually training toward, what she wants her body to feel like at forty-two, what she was carrying around that she hadn’t said out loud yet. It was one of those conversations I didn’t plan for and couldn’t have scripted.

The plan that started a whole conversation.

By the time she left she had her paperwork, a slightly revised plan, and, I don’t know, something steadier in her face. I had a realization that I keep circling back to even now, hours later: the technical part of coaching is actually the easy part. Building the program, adjusting the load, tracking the data, I can do that in my sleep at this point. It’s the part where someone trusts you with the harder thing that still catches me off guard. In the best possible way.

She said thank you and I almost cried again.

She said thank you at the door and I almost cried again. We’ve been working together long enough that I think I’m allowed to say I’m genuinely rooting for her.