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Showing posts from April 17, 2016

4 race travel tips

Traveling to a race is almost a necessity for athletes these days. With so many race options and so many beautiful and bucket-list venues, it's likely that you will travel more than 2 hours to a race course at least once in your racing season. For some athletes, all you know is traveling to races as you have limited options for racing in your city/town.  Race-cations (as we call them) provide a special opportunity to travel to a destination, race somewhere new and (hopefully) enjoy a little sight-seeing and R&R after the race. Although traveling to a race can be exciting, racing is stressful and combining that fact with the many unknowns and potential logistical nightmares of racing in an unfamiliar venue, outside of your home environment, this can bring anxiety, worries and fears - especially if you are racing a new distance for the first time or you have specific goals and expectations for your race.  I encourage you to not push away the thought of tr...

My very first blog post - DNF

February 3rd, 2007.  My very first blog post.  Y ou think my first blog post would be a post about me, introducing myself to the world or talking about something positive or happy in life. But sadly no.  Instead, I wrote about my very first DNF (Did Not Finish) race.  Since then, I have written 2212 blog posts.  That comes to around 245 blog posts per year for the past 9 years.  I've written about our triathlon races, Karel's bike races, my dietetic internship, my travels and events, recipes, nutrition tips, fueling tips, motivation tips and pretty much anything and everything about my life.  And there clearly are not enough posts about our cats as Campy often gets the spotlight.  I'm not planning to stop blogging anytime soon as it is the best outlet for the many thoughts in my head and I love being able to refer back to special times in my life that I have documented through my blog.  I've written happy posts and posts when time...

Daily diet or fueling manipulation?

Source Through this approach, your body composition will change because you are able to perform well and maintain a realistic and sustainable style of eating.  Are you an athlete looking to change body composition and improve your performance as you train for an upcoming event? Consider this:  Manipulating your eating before, during and after workouts in an effort to enhance the adaptive response to training will only provide a marginal performance and body composition improvement if your daily diet is not well-balanced, well-timed and consistent. It's remarkable how the body performs and changes when emphasis is placed on the daily diet as a vehicle of nourishment and when workouts are supported with food as a vehicle of energy. Far too many athletes choose sport nutrition restriction over daily diet manipulation whereas the later can significantly help to change your body composition without comprom...

Private training camp - recap

If you are an athlete and you love nature, mountains and challenging terrain, you will love our training playground....otherwise known as Greenville, SC.  If I had to choose three words to describe what we heavily focus on during our training camps I would choose the words; FIT, FUEL, TRAIN. Of course, FUN is included in there too.  A private training camp is the perfect option for the athlete who needs specific individual attention in specific areas. In the case of our last private training camp this past Thurs - Sat, triathlete Gin (who is coached by Professional triathlete Haley Chura ) from Athens, GA reached out to us regarding setting up a private training camp to help her with her cycling skills (specifically with climbing more efficiently and using her gears more effectively), to assess her bike fit, to discuss fueling and daily nutrition to ensure she stays healthy with her training and reaches her performance expectations in training and on race da...

Boston Marathon reflection

It's hard to believe that 10 years ago I was waking up in a Boston hotel room, getting ready to run my 2nd marathon.  And not just any marathon, THE Boston Marathon.  As a swimmer, turned runner and then turned triathlete, I didn't fully appreciate the magnitude of being an athlete who had qualified to run in the Boston Marathon. After I ran the Miami Marathon in 2005 (my first marathon) in a time of 3:38, a friend told me "You Boston qualified!" No joke, I said "What's Boston?" It took me a few minutes for it to come to me that I had qualified for the Boston Marathon. It was not a goal of mine as my #1 goal was just to finish my first marathon. The thought of running 26.2 miles was so daunting for my swimmer turned runner body who had never ran more than 6 miles before training for 6 months for my first marathon. Fast forward to April 2006...... I remember giving my parents a hug and getting on a school bus to be dropped off in Hopkinton with...