Skip to main content

Transition Lessons

11-7-16

Y'all, so yesterday I volunteered to help out at a 'Best of the Best' triathlon in Denton. I had no clue what I really signed up for, but true to form the race director (RD), Jeff, was super nice. I've found that to be relatively consistent across sports. I told him I had just signed up for my first try and wanted to observe how things went so I could better understand what I was getting myself into!

I left the house around 6:30am and got there about 7:30. The parking lot was pretty empty since the race didn't start until 9:30am. What was cool is that the few people who were already in the lot had their music blasting and seemed to be having a great time! I met Jeff in person and he directed me over to the transition area. Turns out, there were only about 6 volunteers total! *Lesson Learned: Races may be understaffed- do your best to know the rules before starting* 

 My first endeavor as a tri volunteer would be as a 'body marker'. which means I wrote the participant's bib number on their arms and legs, as well as their age. Apprehensive at first, but obviously this wasn't a hard job. Normally I'm pretty shy, or quiet, but in situations like this, I feel more myself and can be sillier. The majority of the people I marked were pretty keyed up as this was an invitation only race so I tried to get them to laugh.  *Lesson Learned: People will be writing on you- be nice to them*

What I found interesting was about 1/3 of the people said "not really" when I asked if they were excited! Well dang, then why bother?? (the people who were happy generally asked for smily faces to be inked on as well!) ((a few even asked for Mickey Mouse? IDK about that yet)) *Lesson Learned: Attitude!!!!!!*

Getting to see how people transported gear and set up transition was priceless, honestly. You can read about it all day, but until you see it, and then I'm sure, until you DO it, it means nothing. Some people brought supplies in Home Depot type buckets, while others had special backpacks. One of the other volunteers, Steve, told me how you set up your transition: you hang your bike up on the rack and one wheel will be off the ground. The space between that hanging wheel and the ground is YOURS. With that space you set up your supplies. It's best to alternate between the bikes if possible, meaning, if the guy next to you has his shit facing one way, try to face the other way, so you aren't booty bumping or getting agitated that someone is in your space. *Lesson Learned: Wheel hanging space. Got it*

Most people automatically placed their helmets and sunglasses upside down on the handlebars of their bike. Why? Because before you can go ANYWHERE with your bike, you have to have your helmet on and clipped. So it makes since to do this absolutely first. The people with the fastest transitions already had their shoes clipped to the pedals, so all they did was put on their helmet and sunglasses before going. Daaaang. I mean, the people who did this weren't in transition for more than 30 seconds. No. Joke.  *Lesson Learned: simplify, simplify, simplify*  

The people who took longer generally fumbled around with socks and trying to put on extra clothes on. This clearly is more my speed.

After watching those who were incredibly fast and those who were more precise, I could see the benefits to both. The fast people likely less comfortable (I'd imagine?) while the opposite (in theory) could be said of those who took longer. 

Okay. here are some of my major take aways

1. Practice. Holy guacamole- practice transitions. Some people fumbled the hello kitty out of everything and got super agitated.
2. Tri Suit or try pieces are necessary. At this triathlon their was no place to change. People had to swim in the same stuff they biked and ran in. 
3. Less, Less, Less. Lots of people brought a ton of S they didn't use (as far as I could see). The people who flowed the best had the fewest items.
4. Nutrition. Almost everyone I saw had snacks during transition or during the next leg. 
5. Have fun! It was so great to see the people who actually appeared to be enjoying what they were doing, vs trudging through it.


Comments

  1. Lester, You should deff get them to draw a unicorn on you. "So yea no mickey mouse please.... unicorn." - Mole

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pain is thy name

12-16-16 Okay so this is actually for yesterdays workout, I was too busy to write it up. The plan was swimming but I didn't have a solid plan in mind, which is always risky. On my drive to the gym at dark and cold thirty in the morning, I decided to go for 800 meters, using only freestyle strokes to help increase my endurance. I did 200 meters of the 800 warming up (!) with both freestyle and breastrokes pretty easily. The water felt good, my head felt clear. I started to progress forward, telling myself it was only 600 meters, which is 'only' 12 lengths. Things felt good, but my quads were tiring out quickly. My guess is that I'm kicking from the knee, which requires more quad usage, than kicking from the hip, which is more core/glute usage. This doesn't surprise me as I'm like everyone else in the world and very quad dominant in most exercises. Anywhoo, when I hit 500 meters, I realized that every time I get to one of the pool ends, I stop, sta...

Back at it

12-2-16 Okay, so, with Thanksgiving travels and then a beat down of an allergy attack, I wound up taking 6 days off from exercise. Not ideal, but necessary to recover. Wednesday was a big day for me: I turned in my notice at work. My last day there is going to be 12/22. I have a few work ideas stored up but we are really trusting God and taking this leap of faith. Anywhoodle... Did 60 minutes of intervals on the bike trainer last night. O.M.G. It felt HARD. I adjusted all the gears and played around with it but never did figure out what was different. My guess is that when Raz set the trainer up, more pressure was applied than previous times to the back tire. There was sweat on the floor and I was barely moving, but hey- I got it done. This morning I had a hard time getting up (maybe because my legs revolted?) but was in the pool by 5:50am. Holy crap. Okay, no more taking a week off the pool. I felt like my lungs had shriveled up and my legs were not participating. Also, the fi...

1, 2, 3

11/22/16 I'm alive! Mexico was phenomenal and I got the chance to use my newly created swimming skills out in the ocean! We did a ton of snorkeling and now I'm sad that we have ZERO snorkeling in Texas. A cool thing I noticed was that I'm so much more confident in the water now than I ever have been. Whenever I've gone snorkeling before or had to swim in the ocean, I more or less panicked. This trip I actually enjoyed myself. It's great that the salt water helped make me extra buoyant as well!! This morning I was back at the gym by 5:30am. I read that doing 16 lengths (back and forth) in a 25 meter pool is 400 meters. (Simple math escapes me again.) This is about how long most Sprint Tri Swim distances are. Well I've never really attempted to count all the lengths I swam since I was mostly focused on drinking less water. Now that I'm writing all this down, it's clear to me I did my counts wrong. I wasn't counting a back and forth lap, merely co...