Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

Now that we are officially settled into Whistler, I can honestly say that I've fallen in love with this place. Never have we raced in such a beautiful venue - and we've raced in some beautiful places! The scenery is jaw-dropping and I keep finding myself wowing at every mountain view and scenic river. It's just beautiful here. While it's always good to adjust to the time zone as soon we arrive, it's actually easier for us to get to bed a bit earlier so that we can wake-up a bit earlier - similar to our schedule at home on the east coast. With a super early race start on Sunday (6am), I am trying to get to bed around 7:30/8pm so that I can get a restful night of sleep and still wake-up feeling rested. This morning I woke-up around 4:45am after a solid night of sleep. The temperature has been very comfortable during the day and drops slightly in the evening. After a pre-workout snack (waffles + PB and Canadian Maple Syrup for me and oatmeal for Karel), we drove a...

We finally made it to Whistler and wow, it is breathtakingly beautiful!! But to get here, it was a long and stressful trip.  I allowed 7.5 hours to travel to the Atlanta airport from our home so that we wouldn't be rushed for our 7:30pm flight. Our plan was to check in our bags and bikes at the airport, drive to our friends house to drop off our car and then head back to the airport. Again, I planned 7.5 hours for all of this. After dealing with the unavoidable Atlanta traffic, we arrived to the airport around 3:15pm (3 hours and 15 minutes after we left our house). Check-in was surprisingly smooth and thanks to Delta's new bike policy, our bikes were free!! Wahoo! All we had to do was pay for an extra bag (we each had 1 suitcase and 1 bike bag) so we paid only $100 instead of $300. When we travel, we park in the hourly parking to check in several hours before our flight as it's a lot easier to take our stuff directly from the parking garage across the street vs...

I can't believe it's finally race week! Today we leave for Canada and on Sunday, we get to race a bucket-list race in beautiful Whistler, Canada.  We selected this race venue because of its challenging, yet beautiful course. The weather is predicted to be in the low 50's at the start of the day (race start 6am PST) and it will rise to the low 70's. The 2.4 mile swim is a two loop course in Alta Lake. The water temp should be around 65 degrees and wetsuit legal. The 2-loop bike course features ~8000 feet of elevation gain over 112 miles. It will be a "slow" bike course that will require a lot of strength, tactics, good riding skills, fueling and mental strength. The run course will be just as spectacular as the bike. The 26.2 mile run is a two loop course with a little over 1000 feet of elevation gain. The finish of the 140.6 mile race is in the Olympic Village of Whistler. I'm thrilled to share the course with 13 of our athletes. We selected this ...

Triathletes and endurance athletes are very susceptible to dehydration and even more so, a heat-related injury at this time of the year. Whereas in the cold/cooler months of the year, athletes can get away with haphazard fueling and hydration strategies and poor pacing, now is the time in the year when a poorly planned fueling/hydration regime and pushing too-hard or too-far will negatively affect workouts, adaptations and health. Let it be known that training in the heat is incredibly stressful for the body. Seeing that training (in any environment) already creates difficulty for the body to adequately digest and absorb nutrients and fluids, you can imagine why so many athletes experience harmful health issues, GI struggles, extreme fatigue, heat stress, dehydration and so many more issues during the summer months when training for an event. As an example, exercise increases body temperature. The harder and longer you train, the higher your resting temperature. Your body comp...

Training is easy. You feel great when you get your endorphin boost, you can control your environment (or select your terrain), there is no pressure because no one is watching or tracking you and you know that if a workout doesn't go as planned, you always have tomorrow to try again. On the other hand, race day is stressful! Feeling pressure to perform - especially in an unfamiliar and/or uncontrolled environment - brings anxiety, nerves and expectations. It's easy to compare yourself to other athletes and experience a heightened fear of failure. Never in training do you feel what you feel on race day. Far too many athletes complain that they can train better than they race - finishing a race feeling like they underperformed, relating back to all the amazingly great workouts that they crushed, yet feel defeated as to why they were unable to perform on race day, despite feeling so prepared.  One of the great challenges for triathletes is translating training into a great...

Taper  is an uncomfortable time for most athletes but it can also be one of the most confusing times for an endurance athlete.  Physically, tapering ensures that the body is rejuvinated and recovered from previous training. Although training volume is greatly reduced, intensity is sprinkled into training in order to wake-­up the body for race day. The endurance athlete who has invested many months to training can now "cash-­out" from previous training investments. For the first time in a very long time, the body is under little physical stress as it enters race day with a healthy, fit, resilient and responsive body.   The  tapering  approach will differ among athletes, depending on fitness ability, prior  taper  experience and any recent history with setbacks.     While  taper  can be physically easy, many athletes mentally struggle with  taper . A drastic change in your training schedule can make you feel a little "of...

Snacks often get a bad reputation because most people choose packaged snacks that are packed with sugar, salt and artificial ingredients, adding energy dense and nutrient poor calories to the daily diet. Additionally, it's easy to snack out of boredom and stress. But if you choose your food wisely, snacking can give you energy to survive the day, help stabilize blood sugar, decrease hunger and fill in nutritional (or energy) gaps. While reducing mindless, boredom snacking will reduce unwanted calories, going too long without eating may slow your metabolism – making it difficult to lose weight, particularly if that was your intention by not eating between meals - and may lead to overeating at your next meal.  Snack tips: Change up your snacks based on appetite, energy, mood and meal options.  Keep non-perishable snacks on hand for all situations (ex. meeting, traffic, errands) Snack with reason and purpose - hold you over until the next meal, fill in nutrient gaps ...