Transitions: Practice Makes Perfect
With only seven days to go ’till my ‘big’ race, I thought I’d better get some practice in with my transitions. VonSmallHaussen’s visiting for the weekend with her bike, so she agreed to help out.
We set up a transition area on the promenade above Tynemouth Long sands, and did six repeats of swim-bike and bike-run transitions. To make it more realistic, I was going to wet my feet before each swim-bike effort, but it was so damned windy that the towel would have ended up in Norway!
Also to improve the realism, we included a run in, and run out of the transition area, and a 1km bike circuit, so I arrived suitably warmed up for T2. I’ve put the area and the route up on the Gmaps Pedometer, here.
We also made a video of both T1 & T2 efforts, but the battery ran out for T2. Here’s the T1 film, anyway:
As you can see, I’m not leaving my shoes clipped to the bike like Zappoman does - I don’t have specialist triathlon shoes (and the Bike Fairy’s patience / bank account will only stretch so far), and I just couldn’t get ‘em on while on the bike. This film also includes a mistake in the T1 setup - I’d left the wrong pedal in the forward position, so I had to start off on my weakest foot. Details like this matter, as you can see I pretty much fluff the getaway.
