The Bike To Run Transition Is Not A Rest Area
When I started racing in triathlon, I used to come in from the bike ride and fumble around with my shoes, grab my hat, my number belt, my glasses, my watch and then stand by my bike while I made sure that I had everything. It didn’t take me too many races to realize that I was throwing away 15 to 30 seconds in T2.
For those of you not familiar with triathlon, T2 is the bike to run transition. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now :-).
Anyway, my current strategy is to prepare EVERYTHING before the race so all I have to do is:
rack the bike
remove the helmet (which gets unsnapped as I’m running from the dismount line.)
put on the shoes
grab my run gear
GO!
I don’t wear socks on shorter races which is any race with a 10k run or shorter. That’s a big time saver. I talked more about socks in this other blog post. So the key to my speed through T2 is the gear “bag.” Sometimes it’s not even a bag if I’m only taking a number belt and a hat.
Put It On Running
Starting the run.
The gear “bag” method makes a fast transition, because all I have to do after my shoes are on is grab ONE thing. I put on everything as I’m running.
For longer races, I actually put a few things into a bag like lip balm and gels. I put those items into my suit pockets as I’m running. At the first water station, the empty bag gets dumped in the trash unless I think I’m going to need it for holding ice later on.
A Word About The Shoes
Tying shoes takes up way too much time.
Here’s something I did not mention in the video. I don’t mess around with tie up laces. They are so “yesterday” if you know what I mean. Instead, I use speed laces like Yankz, because it’s so easy and quick to get the shoes on. But you can’t just buy speed laces the day before the race and expect everything to be fine. This is something you really have to practice for the sake of adaptation.
Yankz laces
Speed Tip #13. The Video
I hope this help you with your races and may your bike to run transition be as fast as ever.
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