Okay. So you're probably expecting me to bitch about some thing in my life I hate like I do in all my other blogs.  But this blog is different.....I'm only going to bitch about halfway through it!:-)  I've decided to start writing reviews of coaches I've known and worked with.  Today I'd like to revioew the ONLY one I've really seriously worked with so far.  Back in January of '07, I was up at the TuHS track doing a workout.  I saw this guy working with another track athlete and it lookd like thwey were doing stuff for the 100/200. About halfway through my workout, he interrupted me and gave me some tips on making my arms work better.  It was the first time I'd ever met J.J. Johnson and  immediately learned more about him as a coach.  He seemed REALLY enthusiastic about Track and Field as a sport. He told me he was going to put together a Track club and suggested it for me.  I had seriously felt like this was a way to continue my T&F career onward so I contacted him again about a month later.  Just as it is now, my T&F career then was nothing short of a joke.  So you can probably see how confident I'd felt that JJ was going to be the one to pull my life out of THE HORSE-SHIT ZONE;-).  JJ has some excellent coaching qualities, yet he has some rather poor ones as well.  Let's start things on the good side.  He's a fun guy outside of practice and really gets along with athletes.  He's an awesome guy to talk to about any life problem in general and seems to use religion as a basis for solving problems.  He is constatly pressuring athletes to stay healthy and is well aware of their health both mentally and physically.  This is a GREAT quality that should be held by EVERY coach out there no matter what sport.  He doesn't even let us practice if it's raining because he doesn't want us to catch colds.  I really admire JJ for his enthusiasm in Track as well.  I've had coaches who sound like they're just coaching to get paid for it and JJ is definitely not like them.  He commits a lot of his time to Track and Field.  If you want to mee one-on-one with him he'll be happy to meet for FREE!  This shows that he also cares about athlete's progress and wants people to get better.  I think all these qualities make JJ a great coach.  But he isn't perfect.  For my first official workout under his coaching he had me do a 400 time trial at the Lincoln High School track in Downtown Portland.  I called him one night to get a workout for the next day.  He said "You could do 10 by 400's with 4 minutes of rest".......WHAT THE FLYING FUCK???!!!! You're having me do a 5K workout to prepare for the 200/400! As these words were going through my head I asked him what event this workout would help me in. "It's headed toward a faster 400 aqnd a stronger 200":-p. No it's not people. But I wanted to gbet better bad enough to trust his training philosiphies and I did all 10 400's the next day.  Over the next several months he had me do workouts consisting of 12x200, 12x400 jogging 400 in between each, 4x400 and 8x150, and other RIDICULOUSLY long workouts.  He of all people I would think would be familiar with an approapiate 200/400 workout plan.  You should be doing 8 200's AT THE MOST not 12! He also had me run 800 meter intervals on a few occasions.  Many of the workouts he gave me lasted over an hour (NOT including warmup, drills, and cooldown!) and seemed to me to be more appropriate for a 1500/800 meter runner.  As you can see, JJ seems to have a funny interpretation of a proper 200/400 workout, at least with me.  His other guys seem to do a lot more shorter stuff and relay handoff EVERY DAMN DAY!!!! I see this as one of JJ's negative characteristics.  Another downfall to having him as a coach is the fact that he seems to not be in his right mind when he's in a bad mood.  I guess nobody is but he really seems to be hard on athletes one day and then cheerful and supportive a few days later. I remember last March when we were meeting at the Alameda Finess Cewnter in Northeast Portland. One day, I was warming up and he came through the door and told me to start running on the treadmill.  I did'nt hear him tell me to do so and he then sarcastically says "Hello?".  From then on that hour-session with him was a living and breathing hell!  He was constatnly on a short fuse with me for going to slow on the Treadmill when it was on like 8 or 9.  He had me do a jump rope for like 5 or 10 minutes and he told me to do 20 pushups every time I accidentally or purposely stopped.  Exact quote:"Until you learn to stay in the air on the jump rope, you're gonna be doin' a loottaaa pushups!" He seemed really ill-tempered the rest of the time I spent with him.  I met with him again a few days later and prepared myself for another miserable meeting with the coach who I thought was going to make my life better.  But he came in and was encouraging and helpful.  Another example of his constantly fluctuating mood came when I called him to update on my workouts.  I told him I was having trouble keeping the sprint form and he unleashed.  He told me that I should stop dreaming of being a 100/200/400/800 guy, that I'm never gonna be as fast as everybody else and that I need to start being "honest with myself".  To be honest, I wanted to punch him in the face.  I don't tolerate ANYBODY telling me that kind of bullshit! But I couldn't punch him through the phone so i just said okay and hung up.  And, a few weeks later, he was upbeat and encouraging again.  Now IF HE COULD JUST BE LIKE THAT EVERY TIME!   He is actually encouraging and helpful the majority of the time but some days he is just not with it.  So this is also one of JJ's downfalls as a coach.  JJ's official grade from me is a B-.  I really think that if he was less confusing and condescending that he would be worthy of an A+.  He does encourage me sometimes and I wish he'd do that all the time.  And so, to all my coach-less fellow Runnerspacers out there, I'd like to say that JJ Johnson is good but not perfect.  And so I must go and find more YouTube comments for my museum and find something else to bitch about in a Shakespeare-plagerized poem now.  Thanks for reading!