Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

  We only had two full days in Charleston, SC so we brought our gravel bikes to ride in Francis Marion National Forest. I used routes from the Swamp Fox Gravel Fondo Race .  I was looking forward to this trip for a few reasons. The first was to explore a different style of gravel riding - flat roads. The second was to enjoy different scenery for a mental boost. The third reason - which was the main reason for our trip, was to take advantage of a promotion that I purchased last year from Blue Green Vacations. For $229 I received a 3-night/4 day stay at a Blue Green Vacation Location of my choice. And for an additional 40,000 Choice Hotel Points, $25 Amex Gift card and $100 Visa Gift card, Karel and I would need to sit through a 2-hour presentation. Karel was not thrilled about having to sit through a sales pitch for Blue Green Vacations but since I'm getting into travel hacking, I felt like I could "sell" Karel on this trip by throwing in some gravel riding. Originally we

On Tuesday, we traveled up to Fort Wayne, Indiana to visit my 94-year old Grandpa Joe, my aunt, uncle and cousin and my brother and his wife (and their two babies). It was a lot of fun to be with family. Campy enjoyed his road trip and his Thanksgiving eats. My dad was certainly missed during this holiday but we had plenty of great stories to share about him. Karel and I stayed active during our trip with 2 x 4000 yard swims at the YMCA. Karel ran once on Thursday and I ran on Wed evening (30 minutes) and then on Thursday (10-miles). Tues and Sat were off days from training due to travel. It was nice to change up the training environment but we are happy to be back in Greenville (and back outside on our bikes). As for food - I enjoy a break from my normal eating routine. I find that traveling and the holidays provide such a great opportunity to be inspired by new food creations. I was yumming a lot over the past week and rather than writing out my delicious eating experiences,

It was so nice to sleep in until almost 7am on Saturday morning. We were in no rush to get up since we had planned to ride indoors on our trainers. Another reason why we could sleep in was because our cat Madison let us sleep in way past her normal internal alarm clock (aka "feed me now!") went off (which is usually around 5:30-6am). After getting some work done on the computer and eating a yummy pre-workout snack, it was around 8:30am when I went to our workout room to get myself ready for my bike workout. As I was writing my bike trainer workout on the white board, Karel looked outside and said "it's sunny, let's ride outside." What a relief as I wanted to ride outside but with the temps nearly 30 degrees, we both first thought it would be too cold to ride outside but without a cloud in the sky, we decided to bundle up and enjoy a few hours on our road bikes. Although our toes were a little cold even with our shoe covers on, we both dressed well