5 Tips for a faster transition

• Know your set up – We can’t emphasise this enough; make sure you know your kit and know how to use it.  If you have tri-specific bike shoes, make sure they are on the bike properly (elastic bands to hold in place) and open ready to go when you get out of transition.  Make sure you know how to put your helmet on properly, what order will you put everything on in.  For me, I tend to work head down, so, helmet, sunglasses, race belt, go!  There’s lots of kit out there but, you want your transition area to be a sparse as possible even if you are racing long distance, you want to take the smallest amount of kit possible.  Use the following question to check if the kit is required or not ‘If I don’t take this is my race over?’ if it is, then you’ll want to take it. If not, you probably don’t need it.  Please don’t take this as gospel; use it as a starting point
• Know your area – Yet another oft-overlooked simple way to make yourself faster in transition.  Know exactly where you are in transition and your routes from swim out to bike out from bike in and on to run out.  Learn to read a map and make sure you walk through the routes you will be using to ensure you don’t get lost, especially if you are racking your stuff the night before as thinks might (and probably will) look much different in the morning.  Try to use fixed objects around your transition area to ‘landmark’ where you are in and give yourself the best chance of successfully finding your kit when you come to need it.  Don’t be tempted to mark your area with a towel or other stuff as it will be removed, or worse; this includes hanging stuff off the racking, such as your wetsuit after the swim.
• Practice your changes – Make sure you practice your transitions with the kit you will be using for the race, and make sure you do it when you have been exercising first (not necessarily swimming) to make it that little bit more realistic.  Go through both T1 and T2, and make sure you start slowly working through your planned dressing direction until you are fully confident in how you will do it.  Then start upping the speed and working on being smooth rather than fast; if you make sure you form the habit properly, you will find the speed of changes will come without much thinking.  If you are going short, think about having your shoes clipped to the bike and forgoing socks.  If you are going long, aim for comfort first.
• Practice your mounts and dismounts – Make sure you know how you are going to mount your bike. Are you going to stop, get on and go? Or, are you going to complete a flying mount?  Either way, make sure you practice these until they become second nature. There is nothing worse than flying through your changes and then crashing into the barriers due to a ‘fluffed’ mount.  Again, take your time to practice slowly, then apply the speed.  The same goes for your dismounts too!  Also, take your time to practice taking off your wetsuit quickly, as this is the area where lots of athletes have a nightmare; check out our article here on wetsuit removal.
• Don’t try anything new on race day! – This statement goes for everything, kit, tactics and nutrition. It’s not worth the risk of it failing.  Make sure you use everything in training, so nothing is left to chance!  This is one of the pieces of advice that is given out loads but not always heeded. Just think about it, you’ve spent the best part of a year training for the biggest race of your season, and you lose it all for the sake of using that new set of wheels and forgetting to change your spares kit for tubes with long enough valve stems and only discover this when you have a puncture halfway through the bike on race day!…………. Worth it?

We hope these top tips have got you thinking and have helped; if you have any other tips that we have missed, let us know!