Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

It's getting closer to that time of the year. New Year diet fads.  The start of the year (after the holiday season) is typically the time when people begin to "finally" get serious about the diet, in hopes of improving health, changing body composition, losing weight or getting rid of unhealthy lifestyle habits. While there's nothing wrong with a New Year Resolution, there's the tendency to take the wrong approach to changing your eating habits. Your old diet gets demolished instead of making a small renovation. You may be wondering why I am bringing up this topic right now in early November. Well, relationships with food are complex, especially for athletes. Whether the focus is on health, appearance or performance (or a combination of all three), focusing too much on your diet and/or body image can become harmful to your health. There's never a wrong time to talk about your current relationship with food and the body. I love my diet. It's easy...

Pre-race While the alarm was early at 3:45am, the recent time change made it only feel like 4:45am. Karel was quick to get out of bed for his morning espresso, followed by his typical pre-race/workout bowl of oatmeal. He ate standing to help with digestion and shortly after, he went for a quick jog around the neighborhood to get his digestive tract flowing even more. After getting all of his gear organized, it was time to drive to the race venue around 4:50am. It was a quick 2 mile drive from the Southern Dunes property to the Lake Eva community center/park (race venue). I drove Karel (and our other coach Joe) and dropped them off near the transition area. Campy and I then drove around to find parking. Thankfully, Haines City does a great job opening almost every parking lot available for their triathlon races. After parking in the lot of a pharmacy on 5 th street, Campy and I walked to the transition area to wait for Karel after he pumped up his tires. The weather was perfect ...

We all know that athlete who seems to bounce back remarkably well from a race, only to show up to the start line at another race just a few weeks later. and make it look so easy. You sometimes have to question if that athlete is superhuman. Earlier this year, Karel wanted to experiment with the idea of racing two Ironmans "back to back" - within three weeks. However, this wasn't just any two Ironman events. After Ironman Austria in early July, Karel's big race of the year was the 2018 Ironman World Championship. A lot of mental and physical energy was dedicated to that race as it requires a very healthy and strong body and mind to tolerate the race day conditions with the best of the best on the start line. However, due to Karel's bike mechanical issue of riding (most of) the entire bike course on one light gear, let's just say that Karel left all of his mental and physical energy on the big island. In the days leading up to IMFL, Karel didn't fe...

Hello from Haines City, FL! Here we go again. It feels like it was just a few weeks ago when we were one sleep away from an Ironman! During our travels back home from Kona, Hawaii on October 16th, we received an email from Ironman that Ironman Florida was cancelled due to extensive devastation from Hurricane Michael. In the beginning of the year, Karel wanted to do something that he has never done before - race two Ironmans within a month. While an experimentation to see how his body would handle two endurance triathlon events in such a short time period, Karel also wanted to see if he would be able to re-qualify for 2019 Kona. Seeing that Karel did not have the race that he wanted in Kona, he was really looking forward to another opportunity to race. Even though there's the uncertainty of what his body will be able to do in the later miles of the marathon due to the unknowns of what's still lingering in his heart, tissues and muscles, Karel was really looking forward to...

The History of Halloween Candy As featured in the free weekly Trimarni newsletter. Click  HERE  to subscribe.  Candy makers in the United States love Halloween. Why? Thanks to trick-or-treating and Halloween-themed parties, Americans will spend over $2 Billion on candy during this holiday season. Interestingly, the ritual of costumes, approaching the homes of strangers to ask for candy and haunted houses didn't become a national tradition until the late 1940's. At first, kids would receive nuts, fruit, cookies, toys, cakes and coins. Once the candy companies stepped in, trick-or-treat candy options became widely popular to increase fall sales. Whereas Christmas and Easter were popular candy events, Halloween-themed candies were created just for this festive holiday. Although Halloween is known to be a fun holiday for children (and creative adults who love to dress in costumes), candy is easy to buy, fairly inexpensive and convenient to distribute, ma...

At Trimarni, we believe in setting a good example for our athletes by encouraging a healthy relationship with food and the body. Karel and I do not follow any extreme styles of eating and we don't strategically change the way we eat or train in order to change the way that we look. We don't weigh ourselves and we don't measure our food (or count calories). We see food as our fuel and as our nourishment and we firmly believe that when the body is well fueled and well nourished, it's healthy. And when the body is healthy, it can function well in sport.  Sadly, we live in a society that focuses on competitive leanness. Many athletes are under the mindset that the leaner or more defined you are, the better you will perform in sport. Some athletes even care less about performance and more about achieving the "look" of an athlete. Rather than seeing the body as the vehicle that allows you to do the incredible in sport, many attempt to achieve a "race weigh...

Pretty cool finish line in the baseball stadium of downtown Greenville. Prior to transitioning to triathlon racing, I considered myself a swimmer turned runner. Since the bike was unfamiliar and somewhat scary to me, I found running to be the easiest sport to do - anytime and anywhere. Living in Florida also made it incredibly easy to find a running race to participate in, almost anytime of the year. Although I struggled with hip/back issues in 2007 while training for my first Ironman World Championship (2nd Ironman), those hip/back issues lingered on for many, many more years to come. Interestingly, there's a connection between my chronic hip/back/glute injuries and running races. From 2008-2012, I would dedicate the spring, summer and fall to triathlon training and then focus on running (with a few half marathon running races) in the winter. Although I didn't give up swimming or biking during the winter, my focus shifted from triathlon to running. I always thought tha...