Armchair Triathlon Advice

My most important triathlon swim insight is this: There are no lane lines in lakes. Just let that sink in for a moment. No lane lines. None. Unless you’re in the Caribbean, the chances are very, very good that water visibility is barely to the end of your arm. This was certainly true in all triathlons I competed in. If you’ve accepted this premise that the Midwestern reservoir you’re swimming in is so murky that you won’t see anything useful underwater, the next thing to contemplate is exactly why goggles would be needed. Turns out, goggles are not needed. How do you keep water out of your eyes? Keep them closed! Eyelids! Use them! Simple. There is a magic trick here and it must be rehearsed but it is simple. When you are in the pool training, pretend you do not have lane lines! Take off your goggles and learn to swim laps in a pool without them. This will feel very wrong to serious competitive swimmers, but believe me, it can and should be done. Ironically the less "swim team" background you have, the easier this is to get right.

I’m no special fancy swimmer, but I could excel where years of swim team training was not relevant and common sense dominated. This perfectly describes the exit from the swim. Most fancy swimmers just hop out of the pool — even I can almost swim out of a pool with a strong kick. But exiting a lake is a different scene altogether. How do you know when it is time to stop swimming and exit the water? The way most people figure it, after a long slog in the water, getting out as soon as possible is tempting. The compounding problem is everyone around them is doing the same thing. Here’s why that is not the right plan — I have passed hundreds of people who stopped swimming too early and tried to wade through deep water. It was easily the most reliable way I could instantly pass huge groups of people. If you can not feel the bottom of the lake while doing a crawl stroke, you are not finished swimming. It doesn’t matter how close that boat ramp looks. It doesn’t matter who around you is slogging through chest high water. Keep swimming! Once you can feel the bottom with your hand you can spring up instantly and high step out at pretty much a full running pace. While the goggle fogged people are wading and thinking, "Wow, that beach is sure a lot farther away than it looked", you can be focusing on calmness and recovery.

I’ve also seen a lot of people not used to swim caps struggle to get them off at the end of the swim. They pull them straight up and get that "shark fin" look. The answer is to simply grab them at the back of your neck and pull them up and forward. Practice this because any dumb surprise like fumbling with getting your swim hat off is really fatiguing.

I didn’t think it needed to be said, but from what I saw yesterday, apparently it does: leave your bike in a good gear to start riding it. An alternative is to not do that, but if you’re going with, say, a single harsh chainring plan, you must at the very least practice your starts. I saw people literally fall over trying to ride away. Remember that water flows downhill; this means the lake you just exited will usually be lower than the bike course; this means there easily could be a slight (or severe) climb right at the start. Practice wobbly starts up hills.

Tape/velcro/stick/strap stuff to your bike so you don’t have to worry about it in the transition. For example, don’t think about sunglasses or sunblock or snacks or gloves or whatever other minor details you might think you need on the bike until you’re a few hundred meters away and settled in. Ideally just don’t mess with any distractions. Certainly minimize.

Do your best to learn to ride without socks.

Some helmet clips are easier to operate than others. Make sure your helmet has the easiest. Hint, you can take a fastening clip you like and put it on a different helmet you like. Or pay a tailor/shoe repairer to do it.

Know how much water you need. Do that kind/length of course in that expected temperature enough to get it very close. Have a hydration plan and mostly stick to it. It’s easy to get distracted by it. Advance planning cures that.

Watching people struggle with their wetsuits made me wonder about their ultimate utility for such a short swim in very warm water. Certainly anything shorter than 1500m would seem very unlikely to benefit from a wetsuit. But if you are going with a wetsuit, make sure you can get out of it in a hurry.

For short course events, consider wearing racing flats the whole way, bike and run. If that doesn’t sound fancy enough for you, be prepared to justify (with a substantial collection of personal relevant TT times) exactly how much time those stiff soles are saving you.

The transition may not look anything like it looks when you dropped off your bike, especially if you’re early because you are fastidious and punctual, or early in the race because you came out of the water quickly or simply were in an early starting wave. Finding your bike can be a serious challenge. My solution was to have a bright orange plastic milk crate (mine finally broke a couple of weeks ago which means they can last decades). The crate was very useful for carrying everything I needed for the race. I could then turn it upside down and use it as a place to sit without wobbling around for the 3 seconds I needed to put on running shoes. But being able to look for that distinctive shape and color was very helpful for finding my transition location. I also had a high visibility color matched towel that I would put down in front of it which could also help with beach sand and post race care. Remember, as The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy says to know where your towel is means to be in control of one’s life.

Unless you’re an Olympic triathlete (where the drafting rules are idiotic and render the entire sport pointless), you shouldn’t have to worry much about your competitors. Ignore them as best you can. It’s tempting, but don’t draft. Not even a little. It’s pretty much that simple. You may also want to watch out for inexperienced and clumsy bike handlers because even if they are professional road racers many strong cyclists are not properly at home on a time trial bike. Be alert for them doing wacky stuff. It’s getting better as pros born after LeMond’s convincing demonstration of time trial technology enter the peloton, but even today, I regularly see TdF pros whom I would not trade time trial bike handling skills with.

Bike handling is a special topic with triathlons. Time trial bikes are weird and, frankly, much less comfortable than a regular Dutch person’s regular bicycle. A lot of triathlon excellence is developing the level of comfort on a harsh bike needed for long hours of training and racing. My strong advice is to make sure you are comfortable with whatever fancy racing technology you are trying to take advantage of before you race with it. For example, fancy stiff shoes may save you 3 seconds in the first quarter of the course, but if your feet fall asleep and you lose 15 minutes later as a result, that’s not a good deal. It’s ok to train to make uncomfortable things comfortable, but don’t try to accomplish that by racing.

The topic of wattage building is vast and everyone has their theories. My theory for bike wattage building is pretty straightforward but often overlooked: ride a bike! Really, get out there and put in a lot of time and a lot of miles. Don’t obsess with working out in a gym or cross training or other things that may distract from actually riding a bike. A lot. Is your bike riding uncomfortable? Fix that. Is your bike riding dangerous? Go somewhere else. No time for bike riding? Replace some car trips. Etc.

You’re properly ignoring your competitor’s pace, you’re in the drops riding beautifully like Fabian Cancellara, you’ve been riding up your local mountain every day with 30kg of bike and gear — what else? It turns out that once you have the strength and bike handling worked out, the sport of time trial cycling actually begins. What are you actually thinking about and consciously doing during the race? The critical thing you’re doing is managing energy output. In pretty much all athletic endeavors, managing effort is very important, but in time trial cycling, it is really the essence of the sport.

competitor handling - Ignore them!

bike handling - Stay down!

wattage building - Ride a bike a lot! A heavy bike too.

wattage management - Perfectly smooth power output. Stay calm!

Don’t ever waste your time tying shoes and do not ever risk having an untied shoelace out on the course. I used these ordinary cord locks to completely solve that problem.

This is speculative, but I feel like if I raced today I might not wear shoes on the run at all. As it is I now wear very thin sole shoes for any running I do and I think it improves form and, ironically, reduces injury problems (because of improved form and attention). But hey, mush around on your waffle iron soles if you feel differently.

One tip that I feel like nobody but me figured out is to fold your number. When I raced, I was one of the very few people who used a number belt. I just created a simple loop of elastic. Today number belts are quite ordinary at triathlons and can get quite fancy. But when you attach your running number to the belt (or your shirt or whatever you’re doing), the important thing is that it shows the number. You are (probably) not required to show off the sponsor or a bunch of blank space. If you are #6 on a number sheet designed for #66666, it turns out that you can fold that down quite a lot. I found this kept it out of my way and, more importantly since it’s probably made of windproof Tyvek, provided critical ventilation. Let me put it a different way: if you’re doing a race on a very cold day and you want to keep your groin as warm as possible, do not fold your number to reduce its frontal area. But here’s the catch with number folding! Modern races have fancy trackers, but in my day, there was often a tab you’d tear off your number at the end of the race — you must make sure you can unfold the number easily and get at that if needed. Trust me, it can be done.

Draft! It’s not legal on the bike (except in the stupid Olympics), but it is perfectly legal on the run. Just because you’re doing 8 miles per hour instead of 24 mph doesn’t mean there are no benefits to drafting. Because running is so not aerodynamic, the effects can be pretty noticeable. If I’m running a race down a long straight city street into a full flag waving headwind, the chances of me not being behind some tall guy are 0%. I will even run slower or faster than my correct pace to get out of the wind and draft someone. And yes, look for that tall guy or a group or, ideally, a group of tall guys. To learn how to deal with crosswinds study echelon riding in pro cycling. The same physics applies to running. Here is an excellent video on the topic. Just remember, in a running race, you should never have to take a turn at the front! Leave that for people who are clueless about drafting effects.

Use shrewd navigation. Do not run a longer course than is necessary. Always sight the next turn you need to make and go directly to it. As a mental check think about where on that straight line to the next turn you should be when you are half way to it (maybe the middle of the road if you’re switching from left turn to right turn). Double check that’s where you really are when you get there. Always be checking this kind of thing. I am always amazed at the people who will run some serious extra distance because they don’t economize this. Think about why track starts over 100m are staggered!

The only sensible deviation from a perfectly direct course is if you can go out of your way for some shade (assuming it’s hot). By thinking about that in advance, you can optimize. This also applies to getting shelter from wind against a building or behind parked cars etc. Running up against a building will often be less windy than in the open road.

If your running is mediocre and you want it to be as good as it can be, the best thing to do is run with a group. That will motivate and push you to run at levels you never thought about achieving. My best recorded athletic performance was a half-marathon (80 minutes, which I’m very proud of, thanks for asking) and that was a direct result of doing a weekly 11 mile run with a club of freakishly fast old guys who taught me a lot. Old guys can do that.