Coach: Carmen Troncoso
LOCATION: Austin High track and various locations
Group Meets: Tuesdays 6pm and Saturdays 7am
COST: $95/Month *See payment details below

COACH BIO

I have been coaching since the late 80's (over 30 yrs.) . I have a master's in Exercise Physiology and minor in biomechanics from the University of Texas. I started running in my early 20's. And went on to participate in 4 Olympic Trials (5,000 and 10,000) . I was part of the USA XC World Championships Team in 4 occasions (this was a dream of mine). I have also been selected as a coach to the USA XC teams. I am still running and racing at as high a level as I can get to each year.  Locally I have coached runners to the Olympic Marathon Trials, and National individual and Team titles, at XC championships, and track events. By now I have been a "Master's runner" longer than non-master's, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can from this "aging process. I am still learning everyday, most of the time from my runners.

COACH PHILOSOPHY

I love coaching highly motivated runners, and I feel that my job is to guide them towards achieving their goals, in a realistic timeline. In order to accomplish that, I focus on getting to know each individual runner, their strengths and weaknesses. I apply as much science as I can to my coaching, yet try to keep it realistic and fun, knowing that most of the runners I coach have "lives". The main ingredient is to keep runners healthy so they can be consistent and increase their fitness year after year. I am 60 years old and have been running/racing consistently since I was 20, I have gone through all the changes that happen to a runner, getting fitter, injured, experienced success and failure, and now the aging process, I try to apply all of it to individual runners. Fast and not too fast. Life is too short to make the same mistakes over and over. I like to help runners avoid some of them.

GROUP DYNAMIC

We have created (the runners and I), a fantastic group that trains together, helps each other in workouts so that we all can achieve our goals.  Since this is a group that focuses mostly on shorter distances, most workouts are "high intensity", which requires collaboration, thus one of my jobs is to know the runners very well to get the most out of them in practice and during races. The main group workout is on Saturdays with a mid-week workout (two groups Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning). I have runners training for a sub-15:00 5K and runners training for a sub-30:00 5k, so every speed is covered. Weekly mileage as needed from 20 to 60 miles. Again we plan it individually. Long runs are done on Sundays (solo or in small groups) and range from 8 miles to whatever each individual goal calls for. But mostly between 8-15 miles. I have runners training for a variety of distances: TRACK events (400m to 5,000m), road Miles, 5k's-10k's and Half Marathons and XC races. We do a couple of road trips every year. We try to do at least one high-profile 5k each year, and since about 70% of the group is over 40 yrs. old, we try to participate in some Master's Championships across the USA and internationally. As long as they are committed to "their" goals, I'm right there with them.

ORIGIN STORY

I started coaching at "The Hills Fitness" in 1987. It was just going to be a year "gig". Same old story, here we are in 2020. Some of the original runners are still with me which is a source of pride for me. The group as it is right now, started when ROGUE was formed. It was originally called "The Performance Project". I still feel that it is the name that fits the best.  It is a "Project" close to my heart and the goal is to get to the best "Performances" we can achieve.  Having as much fun, while forming friendship bonds for life. I feel we have that in my group. I never thought I would be coaching and racing 30 yrs. later but there is nothing I would rather do.  Well almost nothing. There is not a week that goes by that I don't find some source of inspiration from one of my runners.