I went to Hunter Allen’s seminar last Saturday. He was the co-author of the book called: “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”. After reading Joe Friel’s Cyclist Training Bible numerous times, this book serves not only as a supplement, but also provides a lot of new ideas in terms of training. That’s why despite the hefty registration fee, when I heard he’s coming to
My first impression of Allen Hunter is, “my, this guy looks like a business executive on the Wall street”. However, as I listened to his speech, I was deeply drawn, although my interest in the topic was also a factor. I think the reason of his success at presentation could be the following factors:
- Did not linger on one slide for too long: He didn’t spend more than one minute on one slide on average, even though some slides are overwhelming. This also made the pace of the presentation flowing.
- Relate himself to the audience: He referred to the terrain and the Thrift drug race in
- More bodily movement, but not excessive: One of the common guideline in giving good presentation is to refrain from doing some meaningless bodily movement, such as scratching your face. But good bodily movement actually makes the presentation livelier. When referring to some experience during his rides, he would similar a riding position – waist bent, hands holding a bar. And this really made us being able to share his experience better.
- Change of tone: I was notorious in this aspect. More than once I was told by my audience that my voice was so flat that people were falling asleep because of it. Hunter would occasionally change his tone to that of a BBC news narrator to stress something he thought ridiculous.
More on what I’ve learned in the seminar later…
