As a few of you reading this know, I've been working with Hilton Clarke and John Beasley in at DISC getting hours up for mentored coaching as part of getting the level two cycle coaching qualification.

I've got the hours up now (23 mentored, I needed 20), and by way of trivia, I've logged all the time I've spent coaching since the start of January.  So far, 90.5 hours, in a month.  Phew ... That's a combination of time spent running spin sessions, having meetings with riders, strength coaching in the 'haus, time at DISC with Hilton and John, coaching Em at the Junior Vics and so on.

Along the way I've had to use the stopwatch. The stopwatch all the elite coaches use here is the Seiko S149.  It's not a cheap bit of kit, RRP in Oz is around $700 but you can get it online from the US for around $400 or so, which is what I did.  Why such an overpriced stopwatch?  You can get a basic lap/split stopwatch for around $20.  But, this has a printer (big deal?) and it's also the standard that everyone uses, so if I'm working with Hilton, or John, or any of the others we can all use the same timer and know how it works and how to use it.  The printer is handy for working with pursuiters, being able to print out lap splits and cumulative times is of value.  It's also pretty-much bombproof.  John's S149 is about 10 years old and still works, you can't see the writing on the case anymore because it's been handled so much, but it works as well as the day he got it.  That sort of reliability is worth paying for.