Chapter 303 Using a Coach as an Assistant 9 (1/2)
Jake did not actually expect to see Coach Davis anytime soon, he hoped that after the exams arrived the coach would spend several days preparing to create a suitable training plan for him.
Shortly after Jake had finished running Zack returned to university alone while Coach Davis and Jake went to a nearby diner to talk, Jake had seen a stack of papers in Coach Davis's hands and knew what the matter was.
”I received the results of your exams yesterday, as you have no health problems or with your body, I decided to make a training plan for you that I had already thought a few days ago.”
”After seeing how you have been training now I'm sure you have very big stamina and a natural talent for being a marathoner, which means a lot of the problems other normal athletes have that you don't have.”
”This is a big plus and can also be a disadvantage, even if other athletes don't train as much as you can still finish the marathon in a shorter time, you have to adapt to a quick time to win.”
”Fortunately for you, this does not seem to be a disadvantage as you can still get better, maybe just someone like you can try to break the barrier and run a marathon in less than 2 hours.”
Jake knew that it wasn't really his natural talent but the system that did it for him, but he was surprised how Coach Davis realized that quickly, to Jake's relief it could be considered a 'talent'.
Jake was a little embarrassed looking at Coach Davis's well-made training plan, he was waiting for the right moment to tell the coach about his ambition, but Coach Davis ended up working faster than he was.
”Coach, I'm sure your training plan is very good, but I have something I didn't tell you about my expectations for the next few years in athletics.”
”You should know that I always enjoyed running and so I started training for marathons on my own, but that was because I thought it was easier to compete in marathons without good training, and then I found that I had the talent for it.”
”In addition to running I had another dream that was getting a lot of Olympic gold medals, so I think I can try to compete in other long-distance and even short distances.”
”But I know that for these modalities it is important to have proper training, so I was looking for a multi-modal trainer to at least try so I wanted a training plan that involved other modalities of athletics.”
Coach Davis's first thought of hearing this was that Jake was very greedy and wanted so much from athletics, just specializing in one sport could take several years and needed training and talent to keep up.
Besides, Jake, though very talented, was not only training in athletics and also training in basketball, so it was harder and hoping to compete in various sports, but after thinking a little he decided not to say that.
It wasn't just because he knew Jake had hired him just because he planned to compete in various sports, but because of the physical exams and fitness tests, he had done with Jake a few days ago.
In these tests, Jake achieved better results than all athletics champions in long-distance competitions and slightly lower than athletes competing in short distance modalities that required more technique and speed.
Even though these exams didn't show everything a coach needed to know, at least it showed that Jake was much more likely to compete in those competitions than someone who has never competed in any sport before.
So he thought it wouldn't hurt to do some tests for a few months to see if Jake had the ability to fight for medals in these competitions or not, to do that he would have to change his training plans.
”I will be honest, Jake, I don't think you have a chance to win multiple medals in different modalities after all long-distance modalities have very different talent requirements than long-distance athletes.”
”But we can do some tests over the next few months to see if you can do it or not, but I think for long-distance competitions like 10,000 meters and 5,000 meters you might be able to compete to win now.”
Coach Davis wasn't just trying to appease Jake and really thought that for 10,000 meters and 5,000 meters competitions Jake had a lot of chances to win, after all, Jake had a lot of talent for long-distance running.