Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

For the past few weeks, I’ve been completely captivated by coverage of the Cocodona 250 - a 254 mile ultramarathon across Arizona with over 36,000 feet of elevation gain and a cutoff time measured in days, not hours. Watching runners push through exhaustion, sleep deprivation, heat, cold, dirt naps and hallucinations, I kept finding myself thinking, “That’s incredible. I want to do that!” But after a few days, I realized that I don’t actually want to run 250 miles. I don’t even want to run 50 miles. Truthfully, running 26 miles at the end of an Ironman feels long enough. What I was really drawn to wasn’t the race itself, it was what the race represented: challenge, grit, resilience, purpose, and the pursuit of something meaningful. This got me thinking that there are probably a lot of people like me who confuse being inspired by someone else’s finish line with needing to chase it themselves. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by people doing extraordinary things. In many ways, ...

Heat management is a performance skill, not a survival strategy.  When it comes to racing in the heat, most triathletes think about heat mainly in terms of “don’t overheat,” while the best hot-weather racers think about the strategies to reducing thermal strain so they can keep moving forward late in the race. Most importantly, cooling and hydration are not separate topics. They work together to maintain plasma volume, sweat rate, and sustainable pacing. Heat changes the tactics of triathlon racing. As core temperature rises, the body diverts more blood toward the skin for cooling. Sweat losses increase, plasma volume drops, heart rate climbs, and perceived effort rises, even at the same pace or power output. The athletes who perform best in hot conditions are usually not the toughest. They are the ones who manage heat load most effectively.  After participating in a lot of hot weather races, here are my personal top tips for managing the heat in order of priority.  1. Th...

The temps are rising and endurance racing is heating up.  On tap this weekend, IM 70.3 Chatt and IM Jax - both expected to be very warm races!  Training and racing in the heat can feel incredibly frustrating, even for professional and experienced athletes.  A pace that feels comfortable on a cool day may suddenly feel exhausting when temperatures and humidity rise. Many athletes assume they are simply “having a bad race” when this happens, but the reality is that the body undergoes significant physiological stress when racing in hot environments. Heat changes how the cardiovascular system functions, how muscles produce energy, how efficiently the body cools itself, and how well fluids and fuel are absorbed during exercise. Understanding what happens inside the body during exercise in the heat can help you adjust expectations, make smarter pacing decisions, and ultimately perform better and safely.  One of the biggest mistakes athletes make in hot conditions is tryin...