Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

I consider myself a very resilient athlete. I also don't consider myself injury-prone. Although my recent injury lasted around 4 months, I was able to complete two Ironmans, I experienced huge improvements in my swim and bike fitness and I am now back running injury free. This was my first  athletic setback in over 6 years. Having said this, I know I am susceptible to injury. Whether it's my swimming (non-weight bearing) background or bad motor patterns or maybe my endurance and strength allows me to muscle my way through fatigue, me and running have a rocky relationship. I've never had a stress fracture or broken bone and no foot, ankle or knee issues. It's all been glute/hip/lower back related. I've learned that my body needs a certain amount of running frequency + strength based runs to keep my body happy.  Injuries are extremely frustrating to athletes. They force "us" to modify our lifestyle and remove us from doing what we love to do with ou...

Imagine if you could train and race without a single risk for injury?  If it seems to good to be true, well, that's because it is. Injuries are part of sport. If you call yourself an athlete, accept that you are always at risk for an injury. When you train for an athletic event, you are placing a tremendous amount of stress on the body to improve your skills, fitness and preparation. And for any athlete who wants to get more out of his/her body, there are risks to be taken to push a little harder and go a little longer. Certainly, every coach has his/her intentions to design a smart training plan/training environment to reduce the risk for injury but sometimes things are just out of your control. While many injuries (niggles) are managed conservatively with little break in structured training or activities of daily living, other injuries are very disruptive to life, often causing physical and mental stress due to a complete stop in physical activity.  For any athlet...

Year after year, season after season, I was defined, destroyed and strengthened by injuries.  I remember the very first injury I had as a triathlete. It was 2007.   Karel was racing a cycling road race in GA and I decided to do a training run on the rolling hills while he was racing. Somewhere during the run, my entire hip/back tightened up and it was extremely uncomfortable. A few days later after returning home from GA, I felt a stabbing pain somewhere in my hip area during a run and that was it.  And to make matters worse, I was just about 4 weeks away from my very first Ironman World Championship and my 2nd Ironman.  I was devastated.   I felt embarrassed, anxious, stressed and uncomfortable and simply put, my life just sucked for 4 weeks.  Every morning I would wake up wondering if I could walk pain free. I went to bed hoping that tomorrow I would be in less pain. I wished for the day that I could take a hop without pain, let ...

In two days, I will be racing my 9th half ironman distance triathlon.  In 5 months, I will be racing my 10th Ironman distance triathlon and 4th Ironman World Championship.  In 9 years, I have covered 1827.8 miles with my body.  That's like swimming, biking and running from Miami, FL to Maine!!! INCREDIBLE!! One thing I have learned throughout the past 7 years since starting endurance racing, is that patience, hard work and commitment help me accomplish a lot with my athletic goals but life isn't fair or simple when you are an athlete.  Throughout every training and racing season, I found myself experiencing great highs and lows. With the highs, I have won races, qualified for Kona, set PR's and have traveled to really cool places in order to race. Most notable with the lows, I always found myself with yearly chronic hip/glute/back injuries (that would keep my from running for several months at a time), regardless if I felt I was taking risks to p...