Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

Many athletes blame a poor race day performance on nutrition, which doesn't surprise me since most athletes underfuel in training and guess their way through race day sport nutrition. As it relates to long-distance racing, nutrition is a critical component to race day success. While what, when and how you consume sport nutrition during the race can optimize your ability to perform with your body from start to finish, equally, if not more important, is your nutrition going into a race. From my personal experience as a Board Certified Sport Dietitian, who specializes in working with endurance athletes, here are some of the common pre-race nutrition mistakes that I see often, that keep athletes from reaching athletic excellence. Unhealthy relationship with carbs - A fear of carbohydrates can keep athletes from properly loading muscle and liver glycogen stores going into a race. On the other edge of the spectrum, eating every carbohydrate in sight can leave you feeling lethargic...

Back in March, I wrote a blog post about rice. Although the topic was informative, it wasn't the most timely post as March is all about Spring and when I think of spring, I don't think of rice as my food of choice. But now that we are in the middle of summer and the days are long, and packed with training and other activities, rice is the perfect "quick" and healthy food for anyone, but especially for athletes who are busy, exhausted and in need of fuel. Here's the article for your viewing once more and if you missed it, happy reading! --------------------------------------------- For almost half the world population, rice is a staple food. But for much of the US population, rice is seen as a "bad" carbohydrate There are many varieties of rice but what they all have in common is that they contain carbohydrates, protein, trace amounts of fat and sodium and are gluten free.  Compared to white rice, brown rice is often viewed as the ...

Although this is only my 2nd time racing the  Lake Logan Half Ironman , it's one of my favorite half ironman events. With it being ~90 minutes from my house (outside of Asheville), I consider it a "home town" race. Plus, it's in the mountains so the weather is typically cool for August (50-60s on race day morning). Set Up Events puts on a great race, with a beautiful and calm wet-suit legal swim, challenging and well-marked/supported bike course and easy-to-navigate net incline/decline two-loop run. And because the race venue is tucked away in the mountains, the atmosphere is very calm, relaxed and nature-filled. My mom joined me for this race as Karel was participating in the Purple Patch Greenville East Coast camp from Thurs - Sunday. We stayed at the Best Western Smokey Mountain Inn, about 20 minutes away from the race venue and the hotel was clean and the staff was friendly. We didn't take advantage of the complimentary breakfast due to our early mor...

I had a lot of confidence going into the Lake Logan half ironman. I felt physically prepared and my nerves were at an all-time low. I had trust in my nutrition, skills, terrain management and mental strength and I was excited for the opportunity to get out and race. RESULTS: Swim: 29:29 T1: 1:44 Bike: 2:43.53 T2: 1:10 Run: 1:36.55 Total: 4:53.10 (the bike and run were a bit short from the total 70.3 distance) I placed 3rd overall/open female and had the fastest overall female run and 2nd fastest run of the day (by 15 seconds). Knowing that there was going to be some tough competition out on the course, I made sure not to doubt my own strengths when comparing myself to others. I actually went into this race with more confidence in my running than swim and bike! But, I made sure to stay within myself and trust my preparation going into this race. Although I didn't fully taper for this race as I was coming off a big load of training in Lake Placid 2 weeks ago, I still felt like...

On Saturday, I will be racing my 3rd half Ironman distance triathlon of 2017. And 5 weeks later, I'll be wrapping up my triathlon racing season with the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Chattanooga, TN. Although the distance has remained unchanged, athletes are covering the half ironman distance much faster/quicker than ever before. While the distance is not as long as that of an Ironman, I still respect the distance as covering 70.3 miles with the human body is no easy feat. The half Ironman distance requires a lot of preparation. You must be committed to the training for there is no fake it until you make it or wing-it on race day. The training prepares you physically, mentally, emotionally and nutritionally as race day requires great skill, self-management and confidence. Seeing that many athletes define athletic success as 1) A finish 2) Improvement in time, the true success in a half Ironman event comes from being great at not slowing down. Understanding that every...

If you are a breakfast lover, you probably scratch your head when you hear that some people just don't care for breakfast. For me and Karel, we couldn't imagine functioning, let alone surviving, the day without a morning meal after our early morning workout. Although there is great research explaining the benefits of  the morning meal, breakfast can be difficult for many reasons. While lack of time or appetite rank among the top two reasons why it can be a struggle to eat first thing in the morning, I find that many individuals suffer from breakfast burnout. Every morning it's the same thing for breakfast; eggs and toast, oatmeal, nuts and fruit or a smoothie. While your breakfast option may be working for you, overtime you feel less inspired and motivated by breakfast and you begin to not look forward to your morning meal. But despite needing a change, every breakfast recipe that you find on the internet appears too complicated and unappealing and thus you are back to...

For many athletes, exercise guilt is a constant struggle. Exercising in order to improve your physical, mental and emotional health weighs heavy on your mind as you know it's something you should do on a daily basis, especially if you are training for an athletic event, but every day, you feel pulled in all different directions, with little time to devote to yourself. Guilt is often a big barrier as it relates to making changes in your lifestyle. You either feel like you are doing the wrong thing(s) or you are failing at doing the right thing(s). No one likes to feel guilty as it can cause great physical and psychological pain, so why is it that so many athletes have such remorse when sticking to an exercise routine or when training for an athletic event? I find that there are two reasons why athletes experience exercise guilt. Athlete status - Many athletes struggle with the "athlete in training" status. Perhaps it's a new title that is not yet accepted by the...