A lot of thought, consideration and planning has gone into this schedule, specifically our love of travel, challenging courses and racing with our athletes. Although our first race of the 2019 triathlon season feels forever away, we are excited to officially share when and where we will be racing in 2019.
Karel and I will be sharing this race course with many of our athletes as this will be our first Trimarni team race of the season. We like this venue because it's super spectator friendly. The race also provides a great no-pressure vibe to kick-start the season and dust off the rust that accumulated over the winter. This race will serve as a gentle reminder of the suffering that goes into racing for 70.3 miles.
Ironman 70.3 St. George
Although I love, love, love this race venue, I chose not to do this race this year so that I can focus on Chattanooga 70.3 as my early season key race. Karel, on the other hand, will be participating in this challenging event for the 3rd year in a row as he loves to race himself into great fitness. I'll be staying home so Karel will be traveling solo and meeting up with a few Trimarnis who are racing.
Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga
This will be our first time racing the 70.3 distance in Chattanooga even though we've been to this race venue several times in the past two years. Karel and I had raced well on the course at 2017 Ironman Chattanooga (I was overall female amateur and Karel was the 2nd overall male amateur) and liked the set up of the race. We love how the city really welcomes this race. Although the swim and bike are not challenging, the run will be a great test to challenge us mentally and physically. We decided to use this as another Trimarni team race as we like the idea of having our athletes race two half IM distance events fairly close together (4-6 weeks). We feel athletes learn so much from the first race of the season and most of the time, athletes will outperform themselves in the second race by digging a little deeper, mentally and physically.We will have three training camps in Greenville, SC in 2019. Our camps are open to the public and registration is now open.
March 27th-April 1st - Skills camp
June 26th-July 1st - Advanced endurance camp
August 21st-26th - Endurance camp
To learn more about our 2019 camps, click HERE.
Ironman Canada
We are so excited to finally check this race off our race bucket list. With nearly 8000 feet of elevation gain on the bike, over 1000 feet on the run, mountain views and a ski-town vibe, we knew this was a must-do race-cation for us! The coolest part about this race is that the full Ironman distance is on the same day as the half M distance. This made for a great reason to use this as another team Trimarni race. Our athletes can support one another, irregardless of which distance they want to participate in. Plus, this is a race where time goals can go out the window and athletes can truly race for the challenge and joy of racing. Since Karel and I have already qualified for the 2019 Ironman World Championship, we will use this as a race to test our fitness, practice pacing and nutrition and gain more tools for IM Kona. There's always something to learn when racing for 140.6 miles and racing in a beautiful race venue makes it even more memorable. Plus, we want to be reminded of the hurt that comes with racing an Ironman before we gear-up for the big dance in October.Sept - undecided??
Karel and I were originally planning to race IM 70.3 Augusta with our athletes in late September but now that the race in only 2 weeks before IM Kona (one week later than last year), we have decided that it won't work well in our schedule as we will be in Kona that weekend. Our assistant coach Joe will be there in Augusta as a participant and supporting our athletes. I will likely use August/Sept to focus only on my training before Kona whereas I'm sure Karel will be itching to race again as he has proved to himself that he does well when can handle racing back-to-back races (and it actually benefits him).
With no set plans to race after October, Karel and I will be finishing our season in Kona, Hawaii. This will be my 5th time racing the Ironman World Championship and Karel's 4th time. The island continues to be a challenge for us both as neither one us have felt like we have mastered it. After completing Ironman Canada, IM Kona will be my 16th Ironman and Karel's 14th Ironman - for a combined 30 Ironman distance races between us! Although the Ironman is an extreme distance that is far from predictable, it's a distance that suits us well (mentally and physically) and we are both looking forward to sharing the course together and seeing what we can both do on October 12th, 2019.