(bike chain)
Morning Trianiacs.
Check this out.
Fastest bike to run transition
in history, right there that was it.
So, as you're all preparing for your races
you're probably wondering how do I transition?
How do I go from one event to another?
Well, right after I go for this run
I'm gonna meet you at home and I'm going to give you
seven steps to get you from the end of the swim
through to the start of the bike
with as little damage as possible to your body,
and to your race time. Let's do it.
(upbeat music)
Well, all right Trainiacs,
it's not quite our normal set back home,
but I tried to spruce it up, tried to let in
a little bit of natural light.
Tried to get a plethora of helmets and shoes behind me.
Let's talk about transitions. So, transitioning from
the swim to the bike or the bike to the run
has been called the fourth discipline of triathlon.
It's right up there with nutrition as far as importance
because if you spend a lot of time in transition
or, if you just simply execute your transition wrong,
you're going to do things like drive up your heart rate
unnecessarily, ruining the rest of the race.
You're going to spend more time in transition
then you need to, ruining your overall race time.
You're going to do unnecessary things, and, frankly,
being better prepared for how to handle transition
coming into it is going to allow you to feel more confident,
and if you feel more confident you're probably going to
perform better. So you can walk up to the start line
feeling confident, get across your race line feeling strong.
So what I want to walk through right now is the entire
process of transition 1.
Going from the swim to the bike.
And this entire process actually starts in the swim,
and ends all the way up until about
10 minutes into the bike.
So that's what I'm going to take you through
with this seven step process to get through
transition 1 as fast, as efficiently,
and as intelligently as possible.
Let's start off with the end of the swim.
A lot of coaches and triathletes believe
that at the end of the swim, what you need to do is
kick really hard as you're coming into the end
of the swim, to wake up your legs
because they haven't been kicking very hard to begin with
throughout the swim. Because triathletes don't kick
a lot in the water, especially if they're
wearing a wet suit. I could not disagree with this more.
Legs are huge muscle groups. They use a ton of oxygen.
And from the standpoint of age group triathletes,
kicking really hard doesn't really provide us
with any sort of propulsion.
We don't have a really strong kick, so we might only
be giving ourselves anywhere from 0 to 3 percent
more propulsion if we're kicking really hard.
But if we're kicking really hard, what's going to happen?
Our heart rates gonna go through the roof.
And what we want to minimize throughout an entire triathlon
are serious heart rate spikes because what that does,
is it ends up basically burning some matches.
It's one red X on your race plan
if you have a serious heart rate spike because
that burns a ton of energy. And efficiency
is the name of the game.
So my belief is that your legs are awake.
This idea that they've gone to sleep and don't
know how to walk is silly. We go from lying down
on the couch for XX minutes, 2 hours, 4 hours,
to standing up, and everything is just fine.
So it's not like our legs forget how to kick.
If anything, what I would say,
is in the last 1 to CC meters before the end of the swim,
actually just focus on calming yourself down.
So I would say actually, in the last
little while of the swim, chill out.
The next phase is in the few seconds after you stand up.
When you stand up out of the water, you're going to be
going from a horizontal position, which you've been in
from anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours,
and then all of a sudden boom!
Your entire body has to hold up its entire weight.
The weight isn't displaced by all of that water,
providing buoyancy, or a wet suit providing buoyancy,
or being horizontal. You are going to have to hold up
your entire body weight and run.
This is just as important a skill to train yourself in
as it is to go from biking to running.
So how you do this is by doing deck ups.
Deck ups are a swim skill that you build into your swim sets
in the 3 months leading up to your race,
where all you simply do is
at certain points throughout your workout
and on Teamtrianiac.com it's all laid out when
our athletes do it, you just build it into your work out.
Where you hop up on the deck, you run for 10 seconds,
jump back in. This is going to train your body
to go from swimming, to vertical, to running
without having (gasp) another huge heart rate spike.
Because we want to limit that.
The third thing that I want you to think about
is bike placement. This starts when you're setting up
transition. So lets say that this is transition.
And lets say that over here, at the top corner
is the transition exit.
If you look at the Ironman All World Athlete bonuses
the incentives for being an Ironman All World Athlete.
Most of the time the spots for those All World Athletes
is located right near the exit.
Most of the time the dedicated spot for the pros
is right near the exit of transition.
Why this is is you want as much time as possible
where you can run without your bike.
Now what you might be saying
is that a really good transition is probably going to
mellify having to run with your bike,
and you're either going to have to do it in
transition 1 or transition 2.
But you ideally want to have that set up as close
to the exit as possible. It's where pros want to be,
it's where the elite age groupers want to be,
it just ends up resulting in less time
that you're spending having
to do a bunch of things with your bike.
And if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you.
So if you can get into transition earlier in the morning
and position your bike closer to that exit,
if you do have a choice, that's where you want to do it.
Fourth thing, and this is a really big thing
is how to remember where you placed your bike.
There are a lot of times that people are running
through transition and even if it's XX seconds,
XXX seconds, 10 seconds, having to look for your bike
if you're running past your bike,
if you're in the wrong lane for your bike.
With this easy system that I'm about to tell you
it's not gonna take you anymore time to figure out
where your bike is. So it's going to make sure
that you don't potentially penalize yourself
by adding time. So what you want to do is
before the race starts, you want to create
a landmark in transition.
So you want to basically walk transition
either the day before the race or race morning
basically from your swim exit to your bike.
And as you're doing that in a controlled fashion
where there's no consequences and you can concentrate,
look off to the right. Look to the left.
Look on all of the bike racks.
Look at what a marker is going to be
that lets you know (snap)
that's where you go. So in my case,
thinking back to Half Ironman in Atlantic City,
there was a tent on the left. So I ran up,
knew that there was a certain tent on the left, boom!
I turn right. And then what I did was I counted
1 bike rack, 2 bike racks, I think it was 5 bike racks
boom!
That's where I knew that's where my bike was going to be.
And as I started getting into the area I start slowing down.
So to again, get my heart rate under control.
Fifth thing is changing. Do you change in transition?
No. You do not change going from a swim to the bike.
There is one exception, however.
Ideally, you've chosen a race that is a wet suit legal race.
This is really good for beginner triathletes
because it provides you with buoyancy in the water
and a little bit of additional comfort.
That makes me feel good about
(keys rattling)
quiet on set peep.
So what you want to have done is under neath your wet suit
choose a race kit that is going to allow you to just
peel off the wet suit, and go out to the bike.
You don't want to have to change. Put on anything,
take off anything. All of that is lost time.
Triathlon kits and clothing is all designed
to be worn from the start to the finish of the race.
And what I'll actually do is I'll link to a video
at the end of this video that says what I recommend
you wear that allows you to not
have to change in transition.
Nobody should change in transition.
Except if you are in a non wet suit race
and you're a complete beginner and you don't yet have
a swim skin. In that case, it makes more sense
to have just your triathlon bottoms and then put your top on
in transition because that top in the water,
if you don't have a swim skin,
if you don't have a wet suit on over top of it
that's going to create a huge amount of drag.
But that's just basically gonna be a water sail that's like
(imitation of a water sail)
just catching all kinds of water slowing you down
in the swap. Don't want that.
The sixth and next to last thing
is your transition setup. What I recommend people do
is they have every thing that they possibly can
set up before the race starts.
So this means all of your nutrition
is either taped to your bike,
is either in a Bento box on the bike
and nutrition could be in the back pockets
of your kit, if you do have a wet suit
that's going on over top of it.
And have your bike shoes clipped into your bike already.
So if that's the case, you've got your nutrition
already on the bike, you have your shoes already on the bike
you have your nutrition and anything that you need
already in your kit. Only think that's left to do is
put on your helmet, put on your sunglasses
if you don't have a visor on your helmet
which is totally fine, take your bike and out.
That is how you have one of the fastest transitions
of the day. By not changing and not having to do anything
besides helmet on, bike out.
Finally, lets say that you have done all of that correctly
and then you hop on your bike and you start hammering
because you're like "hey hey, Terrin just told me
the sixth things that I need to do, but no,
I don't think there was a seventh." There is.
And you start hammering, that's going to shoot
your heart rate up through the roof
and it's gonna be detrimental to the rest of your bike
and the rest of your run. You're gonna burn through
more energy than you need, and you're not gonna be able to
make up for that with calories. And guess what?
There are no heroes on race day.
There are no restate theatrics. If you burn extra energy,
it's gonna catch up to you later.
So what I want you to do is when you hop on the bike,
ease into the power that you want to hold.
In Challenge Roth, 2019, I spent the entire
first hour of the bike building up to my target race power.
In Atlantic City, 2019, where I think I had
one of the top 5 fastest bikes, I spent the entire
first XXX minutes letting people pass me
as I built up my power to my target race power.
So instead, what you do is build up to your target power,
controlling your heart rate, easing into it,
not letting that heart rate spike. Hold your strong power
throughout the end. Feel great at the end of the bike
all the way to the end of the bike.
Then, boom. You can get on the run and execute a great run
and this is how you get to your start line.
Feeling confident that you know
what's gonna happen throughout that bike
and run across that finish line feeling strong.
So those are the seven stages of transition 1.
It's how to get through transition 1 quickly without
a detriment to your body.
It's going to allow you to execute that great race.
Now, if you want to see that video on how to select
what the right kit is you can take a look at the video here
and if you are a beginner triathlete
who wants help figuring out how to get to
your start line feeling confident and across
your finish line feeling strong so that you can
feel like a bad ass.
And that's what we all really want, we just want to feel
a little bit of excitement because we are triathletes.
And we are pushing ourselves. That's the best part
of this sport. I love that about the sport
and we put out videos on YouTube every single week
so hit that subscribe button below
if you feel that would help you.
Later Trianiacs.