2020 Marni and Karel Race Schedule

Who's excited to race???

A lot goes into planning our race schedule. This is why we try to establish a clear plan as far in advance as possible. Not only does this help us plan travel/accomodations at reasonable prices (not waiting until the last minute) but for a goal(s) to be reached, races should be strategically planned. Otherwise, the training can not be periodized or structured in a way that can safely induce positive training adaptations and race readiness. In other words, you will either peak too early or feel the need to rush the fitness gaining process.

I find that far too many athletes don't put a lot of deep thought into the purpose behind each race on the race calendar.

When selecting a race, you first want to give yourself a few short and long term goals (and one or two stretch goals) for what you want to achieve this season and onward. This will help you understand what you want to get out of every race - giving each race a clear purpose. As a general tip, you can't expect to PR at every race. Avoid the common tendency of only training for one race at a time. See your season as progressive.  Performance improvements are not linear and the most significant improvements come after many years of consistent trainng and racing. Because not every race will showcase your best ever performance, there is something to gain and learn with every race. Once you select your goals, it's now time to select your races. Before you register for a race, give each race some serious thought - do your research. Consider the time of the year, the location, course, size of the race, type of environment (ex. beginner friendly event, safety, logistics) and weather.

Once you create a list of your potential races, discuss these races with your family/support system, create a budget for each race and most of all, make sure each race logistically makes sense - traveling to a race is not always easy or inexpensive. Make sure you can give yourself an appropriate amount of time off work to allow for stress-free travel and a positive racing experience.

By setting your goals and carefully selecting your races, you can then structure your training accordingly. By having a plan, you will maintain motivation to put in the work, even if a race is far in the future. It's important to give yourself appropriate time to physically prepare for each race - otherwise, you'll feel crunched for time and do too much training too quickly. Also, where each race falls in the season plan can also help prevent burn out if you select races appropriately. And most of all, once the season is complete, you can reflect on your season as a whole and determine what worked/didn't work as you plan out your next season of training and racing.

2020 MARNI AND KAREL RACE SCHEDULE

March 11-15th: Clermont, FL Training camp + Olympic distance race 
Marni and Karel racing

April 19th: Ironman 70.3 FL
Marni and Karel racing

May 2nd: Ironman St. George
Karel racing

May 17th: Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga 
Marni racing

June 7th: Ironman 70.3 Virginia's Blue Ridge
Marni racing. Karel racig.

June 24-28th: Greenville, SC Training Camp

July 19th: Ironman 70.3 Musselman 
Karel racing. 

July 26th: Ironman Lake Placid

Marni racing. Karel undecided

August 22nd-28th: Haute Route Alps. 


Click HERE to learn more about our training camps. Registration is now open.

Our 2019 Race Schedule

A lot of thought, consideration and planning has gone into this schedule, specifically our love of travel, challenging courses and racing with our athletes. Although our first race of the 2019 triathlon season feels forever away, we are excited to officially share when and where we will be racing in 2019.

Ironman 70.3 Haines City
Karel and I will be sharing this race course with many of our athletes as this will be our first Trimarni team  race of the season. We like this venue because it's super spectator friendly. The race also provides a great no-pressure vibe to kick-start the season and dust off the rust that accumulated over the winter. This race will serve as a gentle reminder of the suffering that goes into racing for 70.3 miles.

Ironman 70.3 St. George

Although I love, love, love this race venue, I chose not to do this race this year so that I can focus on Chattanooga 70.3 as my early season key race. Karel, on the other hand, will be participating in this challenging event for the 3rd year in a row as he loves to race himself into great fitness. I'll be staying home so Karel will be traveling solo and meeting up with a few Trimarnis who are racing.

Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga

This will be our first time racing the 70.3 distance in Chattanooga even though we've been to this race venue several times in the past two years. Karel and I had raced well on the course at 2017 Ironman Chattanooga (I was overall female amateur and Karel was the 2nd overall male amateur) and liked the set up of the race. We love how the city really welcomes this race. Although the swim and bike are not challenging, the run will be a great test to challenge us mentally and physically. We decided to use this as another Trimarni team race as we like the idea of having our athletes race two half IM distance events fairly close together (4-6 weeks). We feel athletes learn so much from the first race of the season and most of the time, athletes will outperform themselves in the second race by digging a little deeper, mentally and physically.

We will have three training camps in Greenville, SC in 2019. Our camps are open to the public and registration is now open.

March 27th-April 1st - Skills camp
June 26th-July 1st - Advanced endurance camp
August 21st-26th - Endurance camp

To learn more about our 2019 camps, click HERE.

Ironman Canada

We are so excited to finally check this race off our race bucket list. With nearly 8000 feet of elevation gain on the bike, over 1000 feet on the run, mountain views and a ski-town vibe, we knew this was a must-do race-cation for us! The coolest part about this race is that the full Ironman distance is on the same day as the half M distance. This made for a great reason to use this as another team Trimarni race. Our athletes can support one another, irregardless of which distance they want to participate in. Plus, this is a race where time goals can go out the window and athletes can truly race for the challenge and joy of racing. Since Karel and I have already qualified for the 2019 Ironman World Championship, we will use this as a race to test our fitness, practice pacing and nutrition and gain more tools for IM Kona. There's always something to learn when racing for 140.6 miles and racing in a beautiful race venue makes it even more memorable. Plus, we want to be reminded of the hurt that comes with racing an Ironman before we gear-up for the big dance in October.

Sept - undecided??
Karel and I were originally planning to race IM 70.3 Augusta with our athletes in late September but now that the race in only 2 weeks before IM Kona (one week later than last year), we have decided that it won't work well in our schedule as we will be in Kona that weekend. Our assistant coach Joe will be there in Augusta as a participant and supporting our athletes. I will likely use August/Sept to focus only on my training before Kona whereas I'm sure Karel will be itching to race again as he has proved to himself that he does well when can handle racing back-to-back races (and it actually benefits him).

Ironman World Championship
With no set plans to race after October, Karel and I will be finishing our season in Kona, Hawaii. This will be my 5th time racing the Ironman World Championship and Karel's 4th time. The island continues to be a challenge for us both as neither one us have felt like we have mastered it. After completing Ironman Canada, IM Kona will be my 16th Ironman and Karel's 14th Ironman - for a combined 30 Ironman distance races between us! Although the Ironman is an extreme distance that is far from predictable, it's a distance that suits us well (mentally and physically) and we are both looking forward to sharing the course together and seeing what we can both do on October 12th, 2019.

Race-cations: plan smart

Just one year ago, Karel and I raced Ironman St. Croix 70.3. It was the most amazing experience and the course was ridiculously hard. We loved every mile of the race and we will never forget the entire experience of racing on this island. It's like a mini Kona, Hawaii! 

If you are interested, I dedicated 10 blogs to all things St. Croix, starting with our travel to the race, our race week experience, our race report and post race. 

Trimarni St. Croix 70.3 blog series

As athletes, traveling is part of the racing experience. Eventually, you will be "forced" to travel outside your community or state to race in an event. You may be racing in a national or world qualifier race or the national or world championship. Or you may be racing in a really awesome destination as a bucket-list race.

Traveling for a race should be a fun, exciting and memory-filled time for you, your friends and/or family. But let's be honest, there are so many unknowns and logistics when it comes to traveling and racing in a place outside of your home environment.

Its important that if you are planning a race-cation, you think about all logistics, the race course and the timing of the race. Race season planning is important so if you line-up a race-cation on your race season plan, make sure the course makes you really excited to train for it but also you feel mentally prepared to race on the course. It can be an exciting and scary experience to race in an unknown location on a course that you have never experienced before and every athlete will handle a race-cation differently. Don't let the fear of racing somewhere new keep you from enjoying your training journey. 

Always make sure that when you sign up for a race, you feel confident that you can put in the minimum amount of work necessary to train for the race. The reason why I put extra emphasis on making sure you can train for a race-cation is because there is an added stress to traveling for a race and well, it costs a lot more money than just traveling a few hours down the road for a one or two day trip race. This mental stress can affect you physically throughout your training cycle, on race week and even on race day so it's important that you and your family/friends understand with your commitment to training and the race location that you are selecting is not too intimidating for your current skills/fitness. Remember that a race-cation should be a fun experience and because every athletes wants to finish their race, regardless of the location, do some serious research about your race course (and traveling to the race) prior to signing up just because you heard it was a cool race or all your training buddies are doing it too. You want to also consider the prep for the race which includes being able to acclimate to the heat (if applicable), dial in nutrition, perfect skills for your course and feel mentally and physically prepared. 

Believe me when I say that just because you have a race-cation on your race plan, life will not stop for you. It will likely cost more money than you planned for and not everything on race week/day will go as planned. Try to do your very best to make progress with your training to feel as prepared as possible and when you get to your race, make sure you 100% enjoy the experience of your race-cation.  

Karel and I are able to make a lot of memories together when we race together but there is something extra special about traveling to a race. We had our first race-cation for Karel's first half Ironman which was 2012 Branson 70.3 and we selected this race because it was a challenging course. We didn't know much about Branson, Missouri but it was affordable to get to and a great time of the year.

We feel so lucky that we are able to race in some amazing locations together over the past Branson, Missouri, Lake Placid, NY, Madison, WI, Klagenfurt, Austria and now this season, Knoxville, Tennessee, Williasmburg ,VA and back to Lake Placid (Karel loved it so much he will be racing the IM there again this year). Then in October, Karel and I will be racing Kona Hawaii! This will be my 4th trip to Kona for the Ironman World Championship and 10th Ironman. Although I feel much less stressed traveling to Kona after three previous trips to this island, this will be a new experience with Karel and myself racing.

I have enjoyed writing blog posts from all our race-cations but also sharing some of my tips for traveling to races.

Staying active and healthy during travel

Going international: travel tips

Travel nutrition tips

What's in my cooler?

Smart Meals for traveling triathletes

Travel tips for the Kona bound

What's on your race-cation bucket list?

2015 Team Sumbal Race Schedule

What a great feeling to have our A+++ race planned for 2015!!!
Is it too early to start the Kona countdown?

So the question is....How much fitness can we gain over the next year as we save our best performance for the
2015 Ironman World Championship?

Just to clarify, we will never race injured or sick so this schedule is always subject to change.
Also, no race on this schedule is as important as Kona so we will never put our bodies in a situation that we may sabotage our Kona race day performance in a less important race.
Because we do not incorporate a lot of high volume training into our Ironman training plans, we will use most of our season focusing on skills/form, strength and speed prior to increasing volume.
Our typical IM prep is around 12 consecutive weeks.
Also, we know that life "happens" all the time and we always strive to find balance in life as age group triathletes so rarely does a planned schedule go 100% as planned. 

I will dedicate a blog here shortly to my tips on season planning. This schedule was not created overnight and was planned with much discussion with our season goals, strengths/weaknesses in mind.

Marni and Karel 2015 Racing Schedule
Open water swim events and any other events are not included in this schedule

March 22nd: 
Clermont Olympic Distance Triathlon, Clermont, FL - B priority race*
Marni and Karel will be racing

(This will conclude our 4-day Trimarni training camp at the NTC in Clermont, FL. All Trimarni camp athletes will receive a 20% discount to the race and will be racing - fun times!)

April (Date TBD):
White Lake Half IM distance triathlon, NC - B priority raceKarel will be racing

May 17th:
 Challenge Knoxville Half IM, TN - A priority race

Marni and Karel will be racing

June 14th:
 Challenge Williamsburg Half IM, VA - B priority race

Marni and Karel will be racing

July 26th:
Ironman Lake Placid  - A- priority raceKarel will be racing
(Team Trimarni house booked for July 22-29th)

August 17-23:

US Pro cycling challenge - Colorado (not racing!)

Marni and Karel and our friends with Team Gearlink - spectating and training 

October 10th:
Ironman World Championship, Kona, Hawaii - A+++ race

Marni and Karel will be racing(Kona Plaza condo booked for September 29-October 14th) 

TRIMARNI ATHLETE KEY RACES

We are excited to announce that we will have a large turn-out of Trimarni coaching athletes at the following races:

Clermont Olympic distance triathlon (finishing off our 4-day Trimarni March camp at NTC)

Haines City 70.3

Challenge Knoxville (recently Rev3)

Raleigh 70.3

Ironman Lake Placid 

Augusta 70.3

Ironman Kentucky
Ironman Florida

If you are registered in any of the following races or are interested in spectating/volunteering, stay tuned for get-together Trimarni events before/during/after these races. We hope to see you there!

*Our definitions of priority of races:

HIGH PRIORITY EVENTS (A RACES)
These are the most important events of the racing season. There should be only 2 or 3 A-races because  the training schedule should be designed in a way that you will properly prepare, peak and taper the body only a few times during the season.  You can not be on your A-game all the time if you are an endurance athlete.

MEDIUM PRIORITY EVENTS (B RACES) These are the events you want to do well in for a variety of reasons (to practice pacing, nutrition, to build confidence, etc.) but are not the main focus of your season plan. These races are built into your plan.  You should not treat these as “training” races but they are not top priority races in your season plan so the taper for each race may vary  (you should never go into a race "tired" but you should be able to recover quickly from B races to resume training without residual fatigue).

LOW PRIORITY EVENTS (C RACES) These are the events of least importance to you. They are fun events or include prior commitments with training friends, groups, etc. These races are often subject to change or removal because for many athletes, if there are too many races, they will not all fit into the season plan and can take away from structured training and can increase the risk for burnout, injury and illness.