Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

With family, friends and food, I can't complain. Our 2016 Thanksgiving was a great success and we hope you had a lovely holiday. It's hard to believe that we are just days away from December which means that time is flying. It's very common to count down days and rush the week but let's remember to always make the most out of every day. Life moves quickly! Can you believe it's almost 2017???? We started off our Thanksgiving morning in downtown Greenville. We had a few Trimarnis racing the  Trees Greenville 8K , including Karel and thousands of other runners. I just love seeing our Main street packed with active minded individuals and I just love how our community supports physical activity. I passed on the race for no reason other than I didn't want to trash my legs with a hard, short effort as I am trying to be as consistent as possible with my running in this foundation phase. There will be plenty of hard efforts to come in the next few months....

For an athlete-in-training, there are many challenges around the holidays, especially when it comes to staying consistent with training and healthy eating. Your frustration is not well-understood by your non-athlete family members but your training buddies understand that a routine disruption disrupts your goals and makes it difficult to get back on track.  So what's an athlete to do?  Do you put your training on hold and say "oh well" to healthy eating, every time there is a disruption to your routine?  Do you become stubborn with your ways and begin to remove the distractions from your life, even if it means pushing away your family and close friends....maybe even quitting your job, because it takes up a lot of your time and energy? What's an athlete to do. While it's not necessary to put your training on hold for an extended period of time or avoid your family in order to get in every minute of your prescribed workout, it's impo...

As a person, you have many roles in life and with each role comes an identity. A mother, a father, a sibling, a teacher, a student, an engineer, a nurse, a doggy parent....... In the off-season, you lose a very important identity of yourself and that is one of being an athlete. You feel a great purpose in life when you are an athlete, even as a mom, dad, employee, etc. When you were training for your key races in 2016, you didn't tell people that you enjoy running, you enjoy biking or enjoy triathlons but instead, you called yourself a runner or a triathlete. You owned it with confidence (and maybe even a secret fist pump too).  I AM an athlete. This is the title you have carried with you for the past 10+ months, alongside being a mom, dad, employee, volunteer, caretaker, etc. Having a strong athletic identity is what makes athletes great.  With great athletic self-identity often comes high self-esteem, commitment, discipline and motiv...

                                                 The off-season /foundation phase presents itself with a unique opportunity in your season where training volume and intensity is relatively low and thus, you don't expend a great amount of calories. This is a perfect time to break away from relying on engineered sport nutrition products to get you through your workouts and to see your daily diet as the fuel for your workouts. In other words, sport nutrition will play a very small role in your training routine.  However, I feel this is where many athletes eat and train with confusion. I'm sure you have been told that you don't need to eat before a workout in the off-season/foundation phase or you should avoid all sport nutrition during workouts, to burn more fat, in the off-season/foundation phase. While there's scientific research to support that worki...

The off-season is not the time to be focused on your race weight nor is it the time to look for a diet plan as a restrictive and controlling eating method to assist in weight loss. The off-season provides the best opportunity for you to learn how to create a foundation diet. And for many athletes, a prime opportunity to learn how to plan a healthy diet. By adopting a healthier method of eating in the off-season, you will likely find yourself in better health throughout your more specific phases of training. Ultimately, be creating a style of eating that helps you maintain a healthy weight (every athlete is different), while staying in great health in the off-season, you will be more inclined to maintain your realistic and balanced eating strategies when your training volume and intensity increase. Which, as you know, when training volume and intensity increase, healthy eating habits often get thrown out the window because of lack of energy and time. Yep, every athlete has b...

The start of building a great relationship with food is to eat a variety of food. The more you restrict your diet, whether intentional or unintentional, the greater chance you will lose an appetite for food and perhaps even a general dislike for eating. Expanding your palate by introducing your taste buds to a variety of real food textures, tastes and combinations will foster a great relationship with food (not to mention a mega boost in health and energy) but to start, you must stop the rigid rules about food and to improve the way you view, speak and feel about food. While I have not yet learned to appreciate the taste of raw Brussels Sprouts, I won myself over with my dinner creation last night as I could not stop yumming with every bite. As I was randomly constructing this creation, I had no idea what this dish would taste like when it became a final product. But that's what I love about cooking - new food combinations that will excite my taste buds. That is wh...

As an athlete, you make a lot of daily lifestyle choices which are likely not "normal" compared to your non-athlete counterparts. Your standards for daily exercise and healthy eating are far from the norm. For example, when was the last time you said, "I only ran 90 minutes today, but it was just an easy run" or brought a cooler of foods to a work conference because you enjoy being in control of your portions and how your food is prepared? To reach your athletic goals, you make a lot of daily choices to maximize your performance and many times, to an outsider, your dedication to your athletic lifestyle looks absolutely crazy and unnecessary. But when you surround yourself with your like-minded athlete buddies, you suddenly feel part of the crowd. Your decisions, actions and choices are praised, admired and sometimes needed to "fit in" among your athletic partners. You may even go out of your way on social media to follow nutrition experts who...