Transitions: the fourth discipline, and the only one nobody trains

A triathlon has two transitions and both are inside your finishing time. T1 is swim to bike; T2 is bike to run. In a sprint race a competent T1 takes something like a minute and a disorganised one takes four, which is a larger margin than most first-timers will find anywhere else in the race — and unlike the swim, it costs nothing but rehearsal.

The reason transitions go badly is not that they are difficult. It is that you arrive at them with your heart rate at its maximum, cold, half-blind, and frequently unable to do things you can do perfectly well sitting down — undoing a zip, finding your own bike among two hundred, remembering which way round a race number goes. Anything that requires a decision at that moment is a thing that will go wrong.

So the whole craft of transitions is removing decisions in advance. The layout is decided the night before, the sequence is fixed, and the rules are known so you are not thinking about them. Everything below is in service of that.

T1

Swim to bike

T2

Bike to run

Both are

Inside your finishing time

What it costs to practise

A garden and twenty minutes

The rest of the transition rules, in the order you meet them:

• Your kit lives in a very small box — The rules require equipment to be placed "within 0.5m of their racking position in transition, or within the width of the bike handlebars". This is much less space than beginners assume, and it is the reason the layout below is a strip rather than a spread.
• You may not mark your spot — Marking positions is forbidden, and — the part that surprises everybody — the rules state that "wetsuits or other items of clothing hung over racking is classed as marking". The chalk arrow and the bright towel are both out. Learn the landmarks instead.
• No riding in transition, and the lines are part of it — "Cycling is not permitted inside the Transition Area. Mount and dismount lines are part of the transition area." You run or walk with the bike until you are past the line.
• Mount after the line, dismount before it — Both require "one complete foot contact with the ground" on the correct side of the line. This is where most first-race time penalties other than helmets come from, and it is entirely avoidable by not being in a hurry for the two seconds it takes.
• Push the bike with your hands only — In transition "the bike can be pushed only by the competitor’s hands". Scooting along on one pedal is a penalty.
• Nobody may help you — Helpers, friends and family are not permitted in the transition area. Whatever you cannot do alone, you cannot do.

Lay everything out in the order you will pick it up, in a line, on one towel-sized footprint beside your wheel. The rule is not aesthetic: at race pace you do not search, you reach, and a layout that reads left to right in sequence removes the searching entirely.

1. 1

   Step 1: Walk the route in and out before the race

   Swim exit to your bike, bike rack to the mount line, dismount line to your rack, rack to the run exit. Walk all four. They are rarely the straight lines you assume, and transition looks completely different from ground level with two hundred bikes in it.

   You will know it worked when: You could find your bike without reading a number.

2. 2

   Step 2: Find a landmark you can see from swim exit

   A tree, a marquee, the end of a row — something tall and fixed, because you may not mark your spot and the row you racked in looks identical to the four beside it. Counting racks from one end is the standard method and it works.

   You will know it worked when: You have a way to find your row that does not involve equipment.

3. 3

   Step 3: Helmet upside down on the bars, straps open and outward

   So it goes on in one motion without being turned round. Sunglasses inside it if you use them. This is the single highest-value piece of transition setup, because the helmet is the first thing you touch and the most penalised thing in the race.

   You will know it worked when: The helmet can be picked up and fastened without a decision.

4. 4

   Step 4: Bike shoes next, then everything for the run behind them

   Left to right in sequence: helmet, bike shoes, then running shoes with elastic laces already in them, race belt with the number already threaded, hat. Nothing that needs to be assembled at race pace.

   You will know it worked when: Each item is picked up in the order it is needed.

5. 5

   Step 5: Check the gear you will start the bike leg in

   Racked in a gear you can accelerate from on the flat. The classic first-race error is racking in the gear you finished a fast ride in and then trying to start from a standstill in it.

   You will know it worked when: The bike is ready to be ridden away, not adjusted.

6. 6

   Step 6: Rehearse the whole thing in a garden, three times

   Wetsuit off over the timing chip, helmet on and fastened, shoes, out. Then the reverse. It is faintly ridiculous and it is the single cheapest minute you will ever find in a triathlon.

   You will know it worked when: The sequence happens without you narrating it to yourself.