Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

  On Saturday morning we drove ~50 minutes to Clinton, SC for the recon group ride of the Gravel Battle Sumter Forest race. Southeast Gravel  puts on great events and as an added feature, many of the events include a free recon ride to preview the course.  There must have been over 60 cyclists attending this group ride, which eventually split into the long route (74 miles) and short route (44 miles). We rolled out at 10am and finished the ride just before 2:30pm. We ended up with 70 miles, 4 hours and 19 minutes (including regroup stops and a water refill) and around 3000 feet of elevation gain. I like this gravel course because it has a nice mix of pavement and gravel and the longest gravel section is around 8 miles. The gravel sections can get a bit dicey due to lots of holes so you need to keep yourself focused throughout the entire ride. There are a few gravel hills but they mostly come near the end (with a few spaced out throughout the route) but much of the rolling ...

Last week (while dealing with Madison's declining health ) we had two of our athletes in town for a 2.5 day private training camp. The focus of the camp was improving off-road bike handling skills (gravel biking). We also included swim/run training in the camp as our athletes have several triathlons on their schedule. But with their first ever ultra-distance gravel event (150-mile) happening late summer, it was important that our athletes improve their gravel skills to that they can both feel more comfortable, safe and confident when training off-road.  Although the weather was not in our favor with predicted rain all day on Thurs and Friday (the two full days of their camp), we got incredibly lucky in that we were able to drive to two different locations and entirely miss the rain. Even better, on Thursday we were able to ride in a short sleeve jersey and shorts!  For Zach and Ashley's camp (husband and wife from Nebraska) we completed the following over 2.5 days:  Thurs...

  On Friday afternoon, I asked Karel what his plans were for training on Saturday. I mentioned to him that a small group was riding at 8:30 from the parking lot at North Greenville University (a popular meet-up place for cyclists, around 20 minutes away) but I really wanted to go gravel riding. Karel was excited for the off-road adventure so he planned a route that included a mix of grave and road. He wanted to show me some of the segments that he covered during the Belgium Waffle Ride .  We decided to leave from North Greenville University and it worked out great that we started our ride with a few of our friends that were riding on the road. The first ~60-minutes was mostly climbing as we headed toward the Watershed and the up the Hendersonville side. We accumulated around 1500 feet of elevation gain on the road, while chatting with those in the small group. The time went by fast and sometimes I forgot that I was on my gravel bike. That's the nice thing about having a grave...

Back in March, I crashed twice within two weeks while riding my gravel bike - the first in a race and the second in a training ride. Both falls left me with a good amount of road rash. Thankfully, nothing was broken and after both crashes, I got back up and kept on riding. A comeback is defined as a return to a previous state. On Saturday, Karel took me to Walhalla, which was my first real gravel ride since March. It was my courageous comeback. I wasn't sure what to expect as I had never been to this area. Karel had ridden there twice (once on a group ride and once by himself) and he thought it would be the perfect place for my first real gravel ride since March. I say "real" because I have been on my gravel bike a few times (mostly on the paved road) over the past 7 months. He felt like this would be a good area for me to ride because it was scenic and the route was not extremely technical.  It took about 50-minutes to drive to Walhalla and we parked at an elementary sc...