- Getting through transitions
as fast as you can is often overlooked.
But believe me, there is time to be saved.
So today I'm going to be talking
about bike-to-run, and giving you
my top tips for how to get
through T2 as fast as you can.
(upbeat music)
So we want to be able to get through transition
as fast as we can.
And when I started this sport,
I learned really quickly that actually
something simple as changing our laces out
can make a really big difference
to our speed through the transition area.
Believe me, there's nothing worse
than running into transition with a competitor
and then watching them leave miles in front of you
because you're still struggling with regular laces.
And that's where elastics can come in really handy.
They do take a little bit of prep
to get used to beforehand,
and it's worth spending time doing so.
And there's a couple things
that you need to watch out for.
Firstly, you don't want to tie them too loosely
because then they can slip and maybe cause
some rubbing and blisters on your heel
and other parts of your foot.
Conversely, you don't want to make them too tight
because then the top
of your foot can get really quite sore
and pinched, and usually you find out
about that midway through the race.
And finally, what I do like to suggest,
and I always try to do, is do a little bit
of a walkthrough in the house
before you get ready for racing,
just to see how it feels.
And do remember to do that
with your actual race scenario on,
whether it be with socks or without.
Now that we've got elastic in our trainers,
there's a few other things that I picked up,
over the years, that I like to do
to just make the whole transition process
that bit smoother.
Now firstly, what I like to do with my trainers
is add a dusting of talcum powder into the shoes.
Just a really light dusting.
And that just makes everything nice and smooth
for getting your foot into.
Admittedly it makes much more of a difference
if you're racing without socks, I find.
But irrespective of whether I was doing
a short sprint distance in my local club event
without some socks or a long Ironman event,
and definitely using socks, it just became a good habit
for me to add talcum powder in.
So once that's done, the next stage for me
would be to add some Vaseline or petroleum jelly,
just around the edges of the heel
or along the front here where the tongue meets the foot.
Just found that made everything a little bit
slippier to get my foot in, and just helps with
the top, too.
And then the final thing that I did,
just to make sure that I was getting my foot
into that shoe as quickly as I could was,
as you can see here, I just flip the very top section
of the tongue over the last portion of my laces.
And it just gives you a nice bigger surface area
to aim that foot in for, getting a quick transition.
Now next up is our socks.
And to be fair, they aren't for everybody.
But as a general rule of thumb, I didn't use them
in short sprints or Olympic distance races.
But absolutely, once I got into the half Ironman
and the full Ironman event,
I was adding some socks into my transition area.
It didn't matter how comfortable
I felt my running trainers were,
I just didn't want to take the risk
of getting a really unfortunate or nasty blister
midway through the run.
And also make sure, that once you get back
into training after your race,
you don't have something making matters worse
in your sessions.
As we talked about with the run trainers themselves,
I would just dust some talc into the sock.
And then to further speed up the process
of getting my foot into the sock, I like to scrunch
the sock up, just a little bit like this,
just to make things a bit quicker when I got to my shoes.
Right, next is the helmet.
And although taking your helmet off in T2
might sound like a really simple task,
there are a few pitfalls that we can fall into.
And they are getting your sunglasses
and helmet on in the right order in T1.
By putting your sunglasses on first,
they're underneath your helmet straps,
and if you've forgotten to do that,
you can take a moment, once you're settled
and on your bike, during the race
to just take your sunglasses out from over the top
of your helmet straps and pop them underneath.
And the reason for that is, when you get into T2,
and you're all in a rush, we pull our helmet off
really quickly, and I've been there,
your helmet and glasses all get tangled up
and then it's just a mess.
And what we really want is our sunglasses just nicely
sitting there on our head, so we can run
out of T2 and use them on the run.
Right, next up we've got numbers and number belts.
And depending on the race, you don't always have to have
your number visible on the bike and the run,
sometimes you only need it visible on the run.
And you've got two options there
with how to do that.
One, you can just have it attached
to your race kit which is basically on
for the duration of the race.
But a lot of athletes don't like to do that
because pins can sometimes come undone
and they can pierce you,
or they can just ruin your race kit, to be honest.
So the second option, which I usually opted for,
was to use a number belt and pin your number
onto the number belt.
Now don't laugh at me but I did have a bit of a system
for getting my number attached to my number belt.
And I personally always liked to use four safety pins
just evenly spaced across the number.
I saw so many athletes losing numbers
cause they tore off their number belt
because they weren't pinned on properly.
It sounds simple but it definitely happens.
And then I also like to just move
the number up the number belt a little,
just so there's a little bit less of it
able to flap in the wind.
And again, this was something that I often did,
I scrumpled my number up because it would stop it
from flapping in the wind.
There's an awful lot of complicated physics
around doing scrunching paper,
but believe me, as an athlete I figured out,
it just stopped the number flapping around.
So, do not be fooled by transitions.
There are plenty of details to focus on.
And hopefully by incorporating some of those
and more importantly spending some time
in your training getting used to them,
then you, I guarantee, will be faster through T2.
If you've got any of your own tips,
then please drop them in the comments below.
I'd love to read about those.
Hopefully you find this video really useful.
So hit that thumb up, like button.
Don't forget,
click on the globe and subscribe. And if you want to see
some other videos about transitions,
well, Mark has done one about T2
which you can find here.
And I did one about T1 that you can find here.