Coach's Perspective; Making the Most of Transitions
Triathlon is a difficult sport for many to master because of the fact that it requires skill at three such different activities. Over time though, with a lot of patience and effort, most anyone can become proficient and even good at all of swimming, biking and running such that they can begin to see real improvement in their results.
Nutrition is often called the fourth discipline of triathlon and for good reason. For many, understanding how to fuel and then executing that plan can be almost as difficult as any of the three disciplines of the sport during a race and when not done well can have an outsized impact on how things turn out.
But nutrition is really only important for longer events and triathlon has many races where taking in calories doesn’t have to really be a major consideration. It is only for the 70.3 and Ironman where nutrition plays a significant role in the outcome.
All triathlons though, no matter the distance, share a different fourth element and it is one that many athletes often under-prepare for and consequently underperform at and because of this concede valuable time. This element is of course transitions, the part of the race during which a change over is made from swimming to biking and then biking to running.
No matter what your attitude is towards triathlons, whether you are there to win or just to finish, spending time practicing and preparing for the fastest possible transitions is something everyone should do. For those who are there to compete, fast transitions are well known to often make a difference in the outcome of a race. Look back at your own results and pay close attention to the transition times. What if you had been 30 seconds or maybe a minute faster across T1 & T2, would that have made a difference in where you finished in the race? In a 70.3 or IM, maybe not but I am willing to bet that for olympic distance and shorter that amount of time could definitely mean the difference of several positions in the final results.
In my own experience, you may remember of the several times that I have finished 6th and off the podium at a 70.3 by less than a minute or so. While finding that time on any of the swim, bike or run might have been possible I am willing to wager that it would have been a heck of a lot easier to find in one of the transitions and had I done so I would have a few more trophies on my shelf because of it.
For those who come to triathlon to just finish and enjoy themselves, transitions count towards the overall time and should never be underestimated as having the potential to ruin an otherwise enjoyable day. I know of several people who made time cut offs on the swim and bike only to miss it on the run because of taking far too long in transitions. Transitions should be considered part of the event and not a place to socialize, lollygag or have a breather before embarking on the next leg of the race. Saving time there can payoff down the road.
Another way to think about this is as return on investment.
If your T1 time is five minutes and by doing some of the things that I outline below you could save a full minute on your T1 time, that is a 20% return on investment. The amount of work in training required to reliably improve your swim, bike or run time by the same fractional amount that you can improve transitions is, well it is SIGNIFICANTLY more.
I hope that I have now conveyed the importance of viewing transitions as an opportunity to get faster and that I have made you consider that it is worthy of spending some effort in order to do so. The question now becomes, how can you get better at transitions and faster in doing them?
General transition strategies:
There are a few things that you can do to make your transitions faster that don’t require any real practice or actual physical effort. First, think back on your last race and consider what you did in T1 and T2. Now, think about whether or not any of those things didn’t need to be done during the transition?
Transitions should involve the minimum amount of steps and activities required to get you from the swim to the bike and the bike to the swim while following the rules of the race.
For example, you have to remove your wetsuit and you have to put your helmet on and buckle it before you get going. Those are both mandatory. But what else did you do? Did you pick up a towel and dry yourself off? Did you put on sunscreen? Did you eat something?
In T2 what activities besides swapping bike shoes for running shoes and a helmet for a running hat did you do?
If you can identify activities that you did in transitions that did not need to be done there, then you have already potentially identified some valuable seconds or minutes to save.
Run, don’t walk.
You might be tired from the swim but I am certain that you can find the energy to do a slow jog? Doing this instead of walking will pay off with time. If you can run from the water to your bike, even better.
Know your way around.
I cannot tell you how many times I have watched people waste valuable time in transition trying to find their place on the racks. I myself have a recurring nightmare in the days before a race that I can’t find my bike after the swim! This is a simple thing to fix and should be an automatic part of every athlete’s check in process. If it isn’t, start doing it at your next race and watch how much easier it is to get in and out. The process that I follow is this (this is all assuming a single transition for T1 & 2. For separate transitions I replicate the process at both areas):
Rack my bike and look from where my bike is for the swim in, bike out, bike in and run out entrances.
Walk to the swim in entrance and identify exactly how to get to my bike. Usually I count rows. Occasionally I will use a fixed landmark to help me identify my row. Do NOT use specific bikes or movable objects like trash cans to mark your row because those things may be gone when you need them. Walk from the swim entrance to my bike and be sure I have a good mental picture for race day.
Now walk to bike out and ensure I know the best route.
Repeat all of this for bike in back to my bike rack spot and to run out.
On race morning, before leaving transition to start the swim I check all of the directions and rack counts again to be sure I have them down.
Spending this five minutes or so when checking in your bike can easily save a bunch of time on race day so it is definitely time well spent. This is especially important when you participate in large races with thousands of participants and it can be hard to see things when everyone is racked.
I have now given you the easy things that you can do to save time in transition. things that you can do without really having to exert any effort or spend any real time practicing. The rest of the things that you can do will require some actual doing but again, I really believe they are worth it and the amount of time involved is simply not that much.
The biggest thing that you can do to have faster transitions is simply to practice them. And practicing transitions will cover many of the other strategies that I will suggest for getting faster.
Set up your area
One way that transition can be made faster is simply by being more organized in how you lay things out. Since biking equipment is needed before running equipment, ensure that your bike shoes, helmet and socks are all laid out in front of your running shoes, hat and belt. Use a small mat or towel. You don’t need an acre of land to do transitions so don’t try to take one up and not doing so will endear you to your rack neighbors.
Lay things down in the reverse order that you will put them on. In this way you don’t have to think about it. Place your bike shoes on the ground, put your socks in the shoes. Put your helmet on top of your shoes with the straps lying to the side and then your sunglasses within the helmet.
When you get to T1 your sunglasses go on, you pull your helmet on, your socks are next then the shoes and BOOM! You are off! (for IM races where your things are in a bag, put them in the bag in reverse order in this way so that the things you pull out of the bag are the things that go on first)
For the run, shoes on the ground under the hat race belt to the side. Grab the hat and put it on, shoes on and go, putting the belt on as you start out of T2.
Tips to get even faster:
Put your socks on and roll them off your feet all the way down to your toes or just above. That way when you come out of the swim with wet feet you just need to get them over your toes and roll them up the rest of the way.
Consider not wearing socks for shorter races
Don’t change socks for the run (why would you need to?)
Have your bike shoes clipped in to the pedals (when this is allowed) (generally not an option for IM races)
It is SO much faster to run through T1 with your bare feet or socked feet than in bike shoes. Try it. Time yourself running on concrete with your bike in bike shoes or in your socks. I guarantee you will be a lot faster with the shoes in the pedals. You can use elastics to hold the shoes in place for T1 and you can leave the shoes in the pedals swinging freely when you get to T2. It takes practice mounting the bike and slipping the shoes on while pedaling so go to an empty parking lot and do that until you become proficient.
It also takes time to learn how to take your shoes off while they are still clipped in and then dismount so practice that as well.
Some people do flying mounts. I do not but clearly they are even faster.
Use quick laces for your running shoes. Any of the variety of elastic laces for running shoes make putting on your shoes a one step process instead of then having to tie them and you get the bonus of not worrying they will become untied during the race.
Finally, and I can’t emphasize this enough, practice your transitions. You don’t have to do this a million times but doing it several times and especially incorporating T2 practice in to brick workouts is a great way to get better at this.
For T1 practice, pull your wetsuit up to your waist (you should always be pulling your wetsuit down to the waist when you exit the water and start running to T1) Then run a reasonable distance to your bike and practice taking it off and switching to your bike. A dry wetsuit will not act like a wet one so it won’t be perfect but it is better than nothing. (Wetsuit strippers are reappearing at races so definitely avail yourself of them if that is a quicker way for you to shed the neoprene on race day.)
For T2 practice, incorporate this in to your bike run workouts and time yourself! Make it a goal to be as fast as possible and beat your times whenever you can.
Making transitions quicker on race day.
There is one final thing that I suggest in order to make transitions quicker during a race and that is to prepare mentally for them while you are racing. In the last few hundred meters of the swim start thinking about your transition. Where are you going and what is every step that you will do when you get there? Start kicking a little more to get blood flowing to your legs in anticipation of standing up and running to your bike.
In the last few miles of the bike, begin spinning a little higher cadence with a little lower power to get the legs ready for running. Visualize the whole process of T2 so that when you get there it feels totally rehearsed.
If you are still not convinced of why transitions are important, consider this real life example from this past weekend. I raced Chattanooga 70.3 and had the fastest T1 and T2 in my AG and while it did not necessarily mean the difference, it definitely contributed to my AG win.
After the swim I was in fifth place, 2:20 behind the leader.
After a 3:46 T1, 20 seconds faster than the next person, I moved up to 2nd to start the bike only 1:49 down!
At the bike finish I was still in second place down by 2:17. My transition was 2:21, 7 seconds faster than anyone else but more importantly almost three minutes faster than the guy who finished the bike ahead of me so when I started the run I was now in first place by 34 seconds. I would not give up that position for the rest of the race.
These are a lot of the ways that you can work on transitions so that when your race comes around you can shave seconds or even minutes off of that part of your race and potentially see some big movement in your placing, improvements in your overall time and make gains without having to significantly increase the volume or intensity of your training. In an event that is measured against the clock, who wouldn’t want to do that?
Train hard, train healthy.
T1 swim to bike
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T2 bike to run
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T1 swim to bike 〰️ T2 bike to run 〰️
Transition can be a busy place…take your time to know your way around!
