Yesterday was just one of those days... I'm sunburned for starters, which is never a good thing, but I basically wasted a day coaching.

Well I say wasted... In the morning I was coaching the team I wanted to be coaching this term - as it's got a whole bunch of very enthusiastic lads who are really into it and want to do well. They were really up for some hard work, and because I'm not their usual coach I noticed some things they hadn't been told to do before - so I felt like we'd achieved something and they were very nice about it afterwards. We got ourselves in a bit of a tangle at the end, but overall it was a gorgeous morning, we did some good solid work, and I felt like a good coach.

The afternoon was my normal team. 50% people who want to work hard and are good, almost 50% who just want to do it for fun, and one in the middle who's the most enthusiastic of the bunch but doesn't realise you can't ask everyone to follow you when you're far from being the best on the team. We did some race practice and it was shockingly bad. Like I have nightmares about races going that badly. And at the end, when I said well we can't do it again so.... they all replied that they had plenty of energy so let's go again. Clearly I haven't explained the words "empty the tank" and "give it your all" well enough. And then, as if that wasn't good enough, random members of the public started criticising me for being too harsh.

Some days, I just want to hang up my coaching boots.

The worst bit was, I got back to the library and it was all I could think of. I'd do 10 minutes good work and then just start thinking about how horrible I was, and how maybe I should be nicer, and how at this rate they wouldn't qualify. Just kept eating me up. I suddenly got this image of everyone telling me I shouldn't coach anymore because I wasn't good enough and I knew that if it happened I'd just cut myself to oblivion. Not because I care about coaching, but because I can't bear the thought of being a failure. So now of course I'm mad at myself for wasting work time, when I should be concentrating on my finals, and not on whether or not some freshers who don't really care about the sport do well or not.