Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

It's getting closer to that time of the year. New Year diet fads.  The start of the year (after the holiday season) is typically the time when people begin to "finally" get serious about the diet, in hopes of improving health, changing body composition, losing weight or getting rid of unhealthy lifestyle habits. While there's nothing wrong with a New Year Resolution, there's the tendency to take the wrong approach to changing your eating habits. Your old diet gets demolished instead of making a small renovation. You may be wondering why I am bringing up this topic right now in early November. Well, relationships with food are complex, especially for athletes. Whether the focus is on health, appearance or performance (or a combination of all three), focusing too much on your diet and/or body image can become harmful to your health. There's never a wrong time to talk about your current relationship with food and the body. I love my diet. It's easy...

Pre-race While the alarm was early at 3:45am, the recent time change made it only feel like 4:45am. Karel was quick to get out of bed for his morning espresso, followed by his typical pre-race/workout bowl of oatmeal. He ate standing to help with digestion and shortly after, he went for a quick jog around the neighborhood to get his digestive tract flowing even more. After getting all of his gear organized, it was time to drive to the race venue around 4:50am. It was a quick 2 mile drive from the Southern Dunes property to the Lake Eva community center/park (race venue). I drove Karel (and our other coach Joe) and dropped them off near the transition area. Campy and I then drove around to find parking. Thankfully, Haines City does a great job opening almost every parking lot available for their triathlon races. After parking in the lot of a pharmacy on 5 th street, Campy and I walked to the transition area to wait for Karel after he pumped up his tires. The weather was perfect ...

We all know that athlete who seems to bounce back remarkably well from a race, only to show up to the start line at another race just a few weeks later. and make it look so easy. You sometimes have to question if that athlete is superhuman. Earlier this year, Karel wanted to experiment with the idea of racing two Ironmans "back to back" - within three weeks. However, this wasn't just any two Ironman events. After Ironman Austria in early July, Karel's big race of the year was the 2018 Ironman World Championship. A lot of mental and physical energy was dedicated to that race as it requires a very healthy and strong body and mind to tolerate the race day conditions with the best of the best on the start line. However, due to Karel's bike mechanical issue of riding (most of) the entire bike course on one light gear, let's just say that Karel left all of his mental and physical energy on the big island. In the days leading up to IMFL, Karel didn't fe...