Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

In many sports, it is considered beneficial to achieve a leaner body composition for locomotive efficiency — in other words, the less you weigh, the easier it is to move your body. Within the sport of triathlon, triathletes are not immune to this mindset and will often manipulate the diet in order to achieve a lower body fat percentage. Although there are safe and healthy ways to change body composition, triathletes can be very rigid and inflexible with their thoughts and actions. When a driven, perfectionistic, competitive, achievement-oriented triathlete is constantly exposed to diet discussions, advertisements, articles, endorsements and images on social media, a general interest in weight loss may manifest into an unhealthy obsession. With so many ways to enhance performance and to optimize health, two of the most popular sought-after strategies by athletes include diet and body composition changes. When done correctly, performance may improve. However, it’s not uncommon for a...

The past two weeks has been an interesting ride. While I've been incredibly busy with coaching and nutrition consultations as this is an important part of the season for most triathletes, I did minimal training. After returning home from Ironman Canada/Whistler, I was excited to ease into a week of light training before starting my "official" start of Ironman Kona training on 8/12 (today). However, the universe had a different plan for me as Campy accidentally poked me in the right eye with his nail while he was stretching, which left me with a tremendous amount of pain and discomfort for five continuous days. It wasn't until this past weekend that I finally started to feel better. My mom told me that my dad's greatest fear for me as a baby was our cat Sasha poking me in the eye. Of course, as an optometrist, he would worry about something like that. Here I am 37 years later and I end up with a scratched cornea. Without being too dramatic, this was extremely p...

I've been filled with emotions over the past week after learning of the passing of Bethany Rutledge. Bethany passed away in her sleep while taking a nap. Bethany was a leader, mentor and hero in the Atlanta triathlon community. Far and wide, anyone who met Bethany could instantly see her love for triathlon, her twin boys, her husband/family, writing, dogs and life. To learn more about Bethany, here are a few beautifully written letters: Remembering Bethany Remembering Bethany - Triathlete Magazine Obituary Times like this really shake me up. While the loss of a loved one can change your life, it can also change the way that you live your life. Ever since my dad passed away in 2014, I've made a conscious effort to live each day to the fullest. Regardless of the day or what obstacles I have to overcome, tasks I need to complete or how I am feeling, I try to live the day as if it is my last. Knowing that I can't quit my job and travel the world with Karel and Campy, there ...

Surprisingly, I slept pretty well on the night of the Ironman. We stayed up until around 11pm as we first watched the last stage of the Tour de France and then watched some of the IM Lake Placid coverage. I have found through experience that the more I push the run, the more damage I feel in my legs - which affects how I sleep and recover post Ironman. Because of so much walking throughout 26.2 miles, I luckily didn't experience the typical extreme tissue/muscle damage that occurs during 26.2 miles in an Ironman. I was still very sore and had some familiar aches in my left leg but overall, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Karel, on the other hand, was having a rough night and apparently I slept through it all. He was sore all over - head to toe. We kept Monday as a chill day and reserved it for 1) Awards 2) Eating. The award ceremony was outside in the Olympic Village area (just behind our condo) and we were joined by several of our athletes who were still in town. It w...

I had a great team helping me overcome an injury to my back/hip  that occurred ~3 weeks before the race. During this time, I was unable to run but with every day, I felt myself improving - oh so very slowly. I am grateful to Scott, my PT for the dry needling and exercises which helped my body go from pain to relief. I am also thankful to Frank, my massage therapist, for his time and energy in helping to fix my twisted body. I would also like to thank Valerie - from Physiofocus for seeing me before and after IM Canada (in Whistler). I also had Chris Johnson , PT do some tests on me on Friday before the race (thank you Chris for your time and help!). With many hands helping my body, I was able to arrive to the race feeling like my body had overcome an injury. While I still wasn't out of the woods yet, I felt relieved that I was no longer in pain. I'd also like to thank Karel who was so supportive during this time. I knew it was hard for him to see me not running but I fo...

The first few miles of the Ironman Canada bike were a little technical as there were speed bumps, bumpy roads and a few twists and turns. I didn't want to do anything silly in these early miles so I treated it as a warm-up, especially since my body was still adjusting to the bike position after the swim and I was finding myself a bit cold from being so wet from the swim. Once I got on the main road (Sea to Sky hwy) I started to ride into my Ironman event. The layout of this course was rather simple as there were four main segments. To Callaghan Climb, Callaghan Climb, to the far turn around, riding back to town and then you repeat. This allowed me to break the course up into small segments so that I could focus on executing each segment to the best of my ability. Although I didn't have any metrics to abide to, I lapped my computer at each segment so that I could check in with my metrics just to see how my numbers (specifically lap normalized power) was correlating to my ...

Photo: David McColm Saturday was a smooth day. I woke up around 5am after a solid 8 hours of sleep. Since arriving to Whistler, I've been going to bed around 7:30pm PST (asleep by 8-8:30pm PST) and waking up without an alarm around 4:45-5am. After my normal 2 waffles + syrup + peanut butter pre-workout snack, I headed out on my bike around 7:30am for an easy spin on the race course. I used the first 45 minutes to include a few efforts to wake-up the legs and then finished off the ride with a recon of some of the run course (easy spinning). Karel went out shortly after me and did his own thing but we unexpectedly saw each other on the run course (biking). I attempted a jog off the bike but I was still feeling some tugging in my adductor/groin so I didn't try to run through it. It left me a little sad with less than 24 hours before race day but I also reminded myself that I can't waste energy on something out of my control. After our morning workout, we each had a ...