Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

It felt great to get back into structured training last week. I was a bit nervous for my long ride on Friday (4.5 hours) as it was my first outdoor ride since IM Canada so I recruited my friend/athlete Al to join me for company since Karel is out of town. Karel was in Mont Tremblant supporting our athletes who were racing there (both did amazingly great!). I've also been recruiting my swim partner Kristen for my swims - on Thursday we had a toughy of a workout. The main set was 4000 (after a 500 warm-up) and the workout was a lot of building, pacing and specific intervals to hit. Our arms were super tired at the end! Although I'm still not run training yet, I did my first run (on the treadmill) this morning - yay! Celebrating the small milestones. While I've never had a bone related injury, I'm well familiar with soft-tissue injuries and the biggest thing stopping me from running over the past few weeks was the tugging and tightness that I was feeling. While not t...

After a surprisingly great night of sleep on Tuesday, we woke up just in time for the sunrise while sitting out on the patio enjoying a pre-workout snack. We wasted no time with our first workout on the island and headed straight to "dig me beach" for a 40-minute open water swim.  Sadly, the water was a bit more cloudy and there weren't a lot of fish. It was also rather warm. However, it still felt amazing to swim in the ocean with the sun shining down on us.  Karel and I swam an easy 40 minutes (~20 minutes out and back). We kept it fairly easy throughout but built the effort on the way back. The focus was just to move blood after travel and to have fun in the ocean.  Even though it's still 10 days out from the 2018 IM World Championship, the swim venue was pretty busy. It was nice to be surrounded with so many triathletes from all different parts of the world. Karel is looking forward to connecting with some of his Czech friends next week.  ...

After Ironman Austria, Karel wasn't sure if he would ever be able to go that hard in a race again. With only 8 weeks between IM Austria and IMMT, Karel was able to fully recover from IM Austria (thanks to his mom's cooking and lots of IPA and pastries) and return home with excitement to train again to achieve his season goal of Kona qualifying. At IMMT, Karel went "there" again for 140.6 miles. After Kona qualifying at IMMT, Karel was extremely sore and once again, he questioned if he had anything left for a third Ironman, within 15 weeks. But after quickly physically recovering from IMMT, his body was in a good place to train again. And most importantly, his mind was in a really good place. Not only was Karel excited to race on the big island for the 2nd time but he was excited to train for 5-6 more weeks before dropping down the volume before IM Kona. There are several things that Karel has done right this season which has helped him take his fitne...

I can't believe it. We are just two weeks away from the 2015 Ironman World Championship. Over the past week, every now and then, it hits me and I have to take a long exhale to calm my nerves and to bottle up my excitement. In 14 days, Karel and I, and 1500+ age group and professional triathletes from around the world, will start our  140.6 mile journey on the hot and windy island of Kona, Hawaii. With every Ironman journey, I learn a lot about myself. This journey has been unique and special in that I had so much fun training my races this season and I had three great performances to help me re-discover my love for racing. I also really enjoyed how my body responded to all of the workouts. And many of those workouts were not easy!! I've never swam so much before, I've never ran so much before and I've never climbed on my bike so much before. And despite the training load that I accomplished week after week for the past 11 weeks, I've never felt so s...

In the last 48 hours, we have gone from feeling exhausted, tired and slow to feeling fresh, strong and excited.  We had a lot to recover from on Monday and Tuesday this week as we could mentally and physically feel the effects of our last big block of Kona training that happened last week.  Yesterday, I checked the Ironman World Championship event page and saw that bib numbers were released: Karel: 1739 (35-39 AG) Marni: 2129 (30-34 AG) Talk about the perfect timing for a little dose of motivation before a key workout on Wednesday (today) morning.  We were both looking forward to a little higher intensity workout on the bike this morning (6 x 4 min strong efforts w/ 5 min EZ in between) but because we don't have many options for a "flat" segment of road to put our head down and push, Karel set up our trainers in the garage (aka Karel's fit studio) and we sweated for 90 minutes while watching the 1995 Ironman World Championship  for a little ...

What a great feeling to be starting my less than 20-day countdown until the 2015 Ironman World Championship with a healthy and strong body and mind.  On paper, this past week of Kona training was tough and not to mention, our hilly terrain makes everything tougher when we train. But I'm not complaining - training for my 10th Ironman in my new city/state of Greenville, SC has been so much fun! There is never a shortage of bike routes to keep me entertained and I just love all my running hill courses for running (in addition to being 2 miles from Furman University).  Monday was a needed day off from cardio (a little PM mobility strength) and Tuesday was a 8.7 mile AM form focused run and 4100 yard PM swim. On Wednesday, Karel and I did a higher intensity bike with 2 x 20 minute best effort intervals w/ 10 min EZ spin in between and we followed our 2:42 bike with a form focused 3.5 mile run. Thursday was a speedy 4400 yard AM swim with 3 rounds of 8 x 100's strong effo...

This weekend concluded a big volume week of training. What a great feeling to have this past week behind me and what a better feeling to know that my body was able to execute during every workout.  Saturday:  5 hour/85 miles with over 8000 feet of climbing - all at Ironman effort Followed by a 6 mile run Nutrition consumed during bike: 4.5 bottles (slightly short of what I wanted) each with 280 calories Additional calories consumed from wafer (170 calories)  and shot blocks (100 calories) Total consumed: 1530 calories and 108 ounce fluid (~2400 mg sodium) Nutrition consumed during run: 2 x 10 ounce flasks each with 80 calories Clif Hydration Total consumed: 20 ounce fluid + 160 calories Sunday:  1:50, 13.2 mile run (2000 feet of climbing) 2 x 10 ounce flasks each with 80 calories of Clif Hydration Refill 1 x 10 ounce flask with 80 calories + 1 flask water Total consumed: 40 ounce fluid + 240 calories More important to me than using these...