Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

With my mind and body in a good place, I'm itching to get on the plane to travel to Europe for our 5-week European race-cation. While I'm already getting sad about leaving Campy for over a month, I know he will be in great hands between my good friend Christie in North Carolina and my mom. This weekend concluded another big week of training which was sprinkled with some lighter sessions to rejuvenate the body and mind.  This weekend included: 21 running miles 5:20 hours riding (I was suppose to swim on Sunday afternoon but decided to go for an easy spin with my mom instead) Now you may be thinking that these are "long" workouts and you are correct. But in reality, these were my weekend totals as the training that I do is much less than most Ironman athletes in training. It's also more about specificity than quantity. I'll admit that I do have years of endurance in my body but I still believe most Ironman athletes overtrain and get way to caught up...

Whew. What a weekend of training. A few weeks ago, our professional triathlete Ericka planned a visit to Greenville from Friday-Monday so that Karel could install electronic shifting on her bike. When we saw that the weather forecast was nearly perfect for outdoor training starting on Friday, Ericka was able to get off work one day early and head from NY to Greenville on Thursday. Since Ericka trains indoors on her bike for all of the winter and requires layers to run outside, this was a great opportunity for her to train outside and put all that indoor training to good use before her season of racing starts in late April. We have been coaching Ericka since October and she is becoming a very durable and resilient athlete. With a great mind on her strong body, this weekend of training (aka mini training camp) was beneficial for us to see how she bounced back from workouts and mentally and physically dealt with a bit of an intentional training overload under our guidance. While Karel ...

Resilience and mental toughness come to mind when summarizing this past weekend of training. Here's the run down: Saturday: Bike: 4:05 ride (70 miles) with 5700 feet elevation gain and one tough 4.5 mile (35 minute) climb up Sassafras mountain. Prior to that climb, we did a hard effort up to Rocky Bottoms - around 4 miles of climbing. Run off the bike: 2 x 15-20 min smooth effort running with 6 x 30 sec of hill bounding (with 45 sec rest) in between the intervals (total: 48 minutes, 5.64 miles, 407 elevation gain PM run: Smooth running for 43 minutes, 4.94 miles, 276 elevation gain) Sunday:  AM Run: Smooth endurance on rolling hills for 1:45, 12.7 miles, 617 elevation gain PM group swim: 1 hour/2800 yards Prior to this weekend, I had a solid week of training - a lot of frequency workouts. As the week went on, I was carrying around a lot more fatigue and working through a bit more niggles than normal but that's all to be expected at this point in my training block. Strengt...

Well, Mother Nature did her thing and took us by surprise with a few cold, snowy days earlier this week. But the snow was not worth complaining about as it was beautiful while it lasted and come the weekend, we opened our house windows as it was 60+ degrees!  Since the snow had melted around our area come Friday evening, we were so excited to venture outside for a few hours of road biking on Saturday morning. Since we ride on very quiet country roads, where we see more farm animals than cars, we had to negotiate a few sections where the snow had not yet melted. Karel has the skills to ride thru anything but I didn't take any risks and I got off my bike and walked through the icy sections. Three hours and 35 minutes later, we covered around 4300 feet of elevation gain and finished the workout with a 25 minute/3.2 mile hilly run (Karel ran 35 minutes - 5 miles). In the evening, I did my typical PM run for added running frequency but this time it was a short treadmill run for onl...

We are very lucky that we live in a southern city that provides us with all four seasons throughout the year. But even better, we can train outside year round. However, once or twice a year we get a beautiful snowfall in Greenville, SC. which forces us to train inside. On Friday late morning, after our morning swim and strength session, we were shocked to see the rain turn into fluffy white snowflakes. We had over 24 hours of constant snow falling from the sky and it was absolutely beautiful. Although I was loving the change of scenery in our tree-filled backyard, Campy was not impressed as he is not a fan of anything cold and wet. I suppose when you are a 12-lb dog and live in a world where you can never be too warm or have too many blankets on top of you, there's nothing fun about voluntarily stepping outside, onto the cold, wet ground. As for training, it was a nice change to spend two hours on my Tacx trainer with an hour of very specific variable cadence work. The main se...

I remember when I was in graduate school, working towards my Master's in Exercise Physiology, and I just loved studying the information that I already knew. In other words, if there was a topic that I understood really well, I would often find myself re-reading it or testing myself over and over again because it made me feel confident that I really  understood the information. But then when it came to topics that were difficult and unfamiliar, I would often find myself pushing those aside so that I could go back to reading what I already knew. Does this sound familiar? It's very normal for athletes to enjoy doing what is easy and familiar. This is often referred to a comfort zone. If something is unnatural or scary, it is not welcomed and typically, it's not as fun as what is well-known and comfortable. Whether it's a fear of the unknown, worries of messing up, concerns of making mistakes or fear of trying something new, staying within the comfort zone is an ...