Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

  1.5K Swim Marni: 24:38  Karel: 25:14 With the time trial start and small participant list, the water never felt crowded. I was able to swim through a small group of athletes who started ahead of me and soon after the first buoy, I found myself swimming alone. I was passed by a few speedy swimmers and tried to stay on their feet but wasn't able to swim at their speed. I'd call this more of a half ironman effort as I felt like I was swimming strong but the effort was very familiar to me as it's what I know from endurance racing. Karel passed me in the first few hundred yards but I was able to pass him back as I always build my swims on race day. I felt myself getting stronger as the swim went on but couldn't find another gear to pick up the speed.  The water temp was warm but since it was raining, it never felt hot but instead, just perfect. There were a few buoys on the course but as I was swimming back to the shore, I couldn't sight the finishing arch. I kept look...

  Pre-Race I had all the normal nerves going into the event. It was a welcomed experience to feel these emotions as I hadn't felt them since last October at the 2019 Ironman World Championship. Eleven months without racing felt like an eternity but one thing felt familiar.....I was super excited to race.  Since Karel and I registered for this event around two weeks ago, we didn't have any expectations for this event. There was no Olympic specific training. As endurance athletes, our strength is being great at not slowing down. Fast is relative but we certainly didn't feel "fast" going into this event. Not having expectations helped to eliminate any pressure that we needed to prove something at this event.  The day before the event was a normal day. We both went out for a pre-race workout (~45 min interval bike followed by a ~20-minute run) and then went straight into work mode. Since the event was only ~1:15 away, we opted to stay at home and head to the race venu...

  This picture was from our last triathlon - waaaay back in October at the Ironman World Championship.  After all of our registered events were cancelled, I didn't have much confidence that we would be racing in 2020. Not too long ago in mid-summer, we heard that a USAT sanctioned race was happening just 63 miles away. We kept it on our radar as a possible race option. We waited until 2 weeks before the event before we made the decision to register (which we did last week) and now we can finally say that it is race week!  Karel and I will be participating in the Tugaloo Olympic distance triathlon on Saturday - September 12th, 2020 along with eight of our athletes. I guess we could call this a team race - yippee! Knowing that we are still in a pandemic and the race experience is a bit different, here are a few of my thoughts going into this race:  I have extreme gratitude for the local community, race director and event staff for putting on this race.  We are ta...

With a job title of "triathlon coach", Karel and I have the big responsibility of help our team of athletes, physically prepare for races while keeping them in good health.  Coaching is much more than writing workouts as it requires understanding the athlete as an individual and stepping inside the athlete's life to provide the most appropriate training plan for consistent athletic development.  Karel and I take our coaching job very seriously and part of our job is putting on training camps. We absolutely love the camp experience as a way to interact with athletes in a group training environment.  Seeing that Karel and I are not only coaches but we are also athletes, it's important to stress that we understand exactly what our athletes feel and experience with training and we are very aware of the fact that training for triathlons, in a busy life, is not easy. But, on race day, we are reminded of the why in our triathlon hobby. Race day is what we ...

On the first day of camp, at our evening meeting, Karel talked to the campers about the purpose of camp. Our campers knew they were training with an intentional overload of stress and that they would be "racing" an Olympic distance triathlon on the last day of camp. But we emphasized that the race is not why they are at camp. We could not have them worried or overly focused about the race and we certainly did not want them to save their energy for Sunday. With every camp workout having a specific purpose and placement, we knew with the right mindset, our campers would be impressive on race day - even after 3 days and over 12 hours of training. At our team meeting on Saturday we all had a good laugh that on Sunday, we would have our shortest workout which was the Olympic distance race. With this, we also told our athletes to make sure they thank their body for being strong enough to tolerate so much training volume and intensity in 4 days. Of course, we told them they had the...

Throughout the entire camp, our athletes knew that they would be racing a USAT-sanctioned Olympic distance triathlon on the last day of camp. Little did they know that they would all do amazingly well on race day despite over 12 hours of training accomplished in 3 days.  How was this possible? If the mind is in a good place and you remove the outside pressure and internal expectations, you'd be surprised what the body can accomplish.  Although we do not recommend going into your races exhausted, it's extremely valuable to put priority on your races in your season plan and to not chase times/places with each race but to instead, use the race to gain experience, knowledge and skills for down the season road of racing.  We knew our athletes would be able to pull out the "I just did a training camp" card at any point during the race and take it easy but that's not how our athletes approach races.  We encouraged every one of our athletes to rac...