- Lay everything you need out in plain sight before the race. You don’t want to be fumbling through a bag searching for your shoes during the race.
- Buy a quick drying tri outfit and wear it when you swim. You don’t need your cool bike jersey. This isn’t some fashion show.
- For god’s sake, don’t sit down. I see so many people sit down to put on shoes, etc. Total waste of time
- Tape your nutrition, etc. to your bike and eat on the bike, not while standing still
- Use cooking spray inside your wetsuit, near your calves to make it easier to take off. You should be half way out of your wetsuit by the time you get to your bike, then just slide off the rest when you get to your spot.
- Have your bike shoes clipped in to your bike and put them on while pedaling. Moving is better than not moving. With a little practice this becomes quite easy.
- I don’t have a tri road shoe, so a trick I use to prevent my shoe straps from coming out of the eyelet is to glue a little furniture pad (you can get them at Home Depot. They are about 1/2 inch round and a 1/4 inch thick) to the strap itself, so it acts like a stop when it hits the eyelet. Having that strap come out can be a big time waster.
- Know where your bike/rack is. Some people use a balloon or a ribbon. I wasted 5 seconds at the Buffalo Triathlon because I overshot my rack coming in from the bike. 5 seconds not a big deal? That plus 4 more seconds and I would have been in 10 place instead of 11th.
- Visualize your transitions. Picture yourself coming out of the water, unzipping your wetsuit as you run toward your bike, etc.
- Practice, practice, practice. You don’t need water to practice taking off your wetsuit. Spend a 30 minutes on a training day transitioning from swim to bike and then bike to run. I know my neighbors think I am crazy, but I setup a mini transition area in my yard (use a sawhorse for a bike rack) and practice both transitions. I have saved myself a lot of time in races by having a repeatable routine.
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December 6th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
[...] Sprint races are often won or lost in transition. Analyzing many of the races I was in, plus a few that I watched, the difference in placing is often in transition. I noticed this to be especially true at this year’s Green Lakes Triathlon, where 1st and 2nd place came in to the T2 within 10 seconds of each other. The eventual winner exited T2 far ahead of T2. I think at one point, the second place guy even sat down to take his bike shoes off and put on his running shoes. At this year’s Cayuga Lake Tri, the difference between me in first place for our age group and the guy behind me was about 1 minute, almost all of which was in transition. Our bike, swim and run were virtually even, but I beat him in both transitions. See my Transition Tips entry for some tips on faster transitions [...]