If you’ve got one of your first few races coming up, you must know the do’s and don’ts that you should do in triathlon races.
Five DO’S in triathlon
👉Warm up
The first DO is to warm up. How you do this is by going in reverse order of the race. Start with a small run, a short bike and a little swim. You don’t want to exhaust yourself out in these warm-ups.
You want to get to the period of doing a twenty to thirty-second strides, sprints, and intervals at race pace. By the time the race gets near, you want to have opened up your lungs and your heart so that you’re ready to move at your race pace.
If you can’t get into the water, bring some stretchy cords and make sure that you can move your arms in the fashion that you would once you get out into the swim.
Get a glimpse of the swimming course
👉The second DO is that you should be sighting the swim course.
Considering that you can get into the water, go out and do a light swim and go to the corners of the buoys and the turns in the water and look onshore and look for tree lines that you can use to sight because it’s going to be really hard to spot those buoys and you don’t want to be forced to follow anything but tows.
Make sure that you have a sight line that’s higher up above the water that you can see without any trouble. Transition one and two from the bike
👉The third DO is to, in transition one, make sure that you put on and clip in your helmet before you even touch your bike.
Then in transition two, make sure you rack your bike before unclipping your helmet.It is a huge issue.
Don’t go gaining yourself a penalty just by taking on or putting on, putting off, taking on or putting off your helmet before or after you should be.
The transition from the entrance to exit
👉The fourth DO is to go through transition one and transition two from the entrance to the exit, marking exactly where your transition zone is before the race.
You want to go into each transition knowing where the entrance and the exit are, what your route is going to be, and make sure that you count which rack and how far down it is.
Make sure you know precisely where you’re going into, out of, and finding your bike. Take a moderate amount of carb
👉The fifth DO is to take in MODERATE amounts of carb.
Do not load up on carbs and Gatorade and electrolyte drinks and water and fluid and all this stuff throughout the race.
If your body hasn’t been trained to handle a massive amount of food going into your gut, guess what? You’re not going to be able to process all that food and carbs and electrolytes going into your stomach. Be very moderate
Five DON’TS in triathlon
👉Don’t go all out in the race
The first DON’T is to not go all out in the race. Relax a little bit. It is a long-drawn day. Typically, triumphant races are made not by the person that goes the fastest, but by the person that slows down the least.
If you are going all out on the swim, you are going to be cooked for the bike. If you go all out on the bike, your legs are persisting in despising you on the run. If you go all out in the first few bits of the run, you got a long way to go, and you are going to get some cramps.
Think about going eighty to eighty-five percent of your max throughout a race.
Once you start gaining more fitness, gaining more confidence, knowing your pacing a little bit better, then you can start pushing the efforts, but in the first few races where you’re just getting yourself comfortable, don’t go all out.
Don’t plan your transition
👉The second DON’T is to, don’t plan your transition one and transition twos to be a big pit stop.
Mostly, a good rule of thumb is to think about how much put into your transition and how much you should prepare to change over from one sport to the other.
If you can’t do one of the tasks that you want to do in transition within the first few bits of the bike or the run, then you are doing too much.
For instance, you can’t put on a vast compression sock in the first kilometre of the race because you are running, so you know what? Don’t install on compression socks in transition.
If you can’t have a heavy meal in the first kilometre of the track or the bike, don’t plan to have a large meal with a bunch of calories while you’re in transition.
You have to think minimally in the transition to have a quick change and be sure that you are not doing too much and complicating the race because you are wasting your time.
Don’t think about losing your notes, or losing your phone. Think about what is the least amount that you can do in transition and in the first part of the bike or the run to get me through that next leg of the race is?
If you think minimally, you probably going to do a lot better getting in and out of transition quicker. Don’t start in the middle of your swim pack
👉The third most significant DON’T that you should not, absolutely not ever be doing, is to start in the middle of the swim pack if you’re worried about getting knocked around.
For years and years, even though I was one of the faster swimmers, I would end up going off to the side of the swim pack because I didn’t want to be knocked around in that chaos of the first few seconds of the swim.
I’d let all the goofs that are throwing the elbows and the feet sort it all out amongst themselves in the middle, and I’d swim up in front of them and get away from all that crap.
If you can’t swim up in front of all that crap, stay behind all that crap, off to the side. You’re going to have a better and probably a much faster race if you can maintain calmness in the water.
The last action you need to do is to boost your heart in the first few minutes of the race, getting a race plan knocked out of gear because you might get kicked in the face, or the stomach or elbowed in the jaw.
Don’t load carb immensely.
👉The fourth DON’T is not to load carb immensely.
If your first few races would be sprint and Olympic, you don’t have to lap in. You don’t have to pile up on carbs by having huge dinners and massive breakfast before the race.
If you want to load some carb, you can have at least twenty to thirty percent of carbs and calories the day before. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot more. Have a light carb-based breakfast before the race.
Don’t pile as many carbs as possible.
👉The last DON’T relates to the fourth one. Do not load as many carbs as possible during the race.
An excellent rule of thumb is to have anywhere between about 20 and 30 grams of carbs every half hour plus a light electrolyte drink.
That alone is more than adequate for most races, especially your first couple which are probably a sprint or an Olympic, so you don’t need tons of calories for these types of events.
Having too much in your stomach, especially while all the blood is in your arms and your legs, raise my legs here, and not in your stomach, it’s going to be hard for your body to digest whatever you put in your stomach, so you got to err on the side of caution.
This is all a part of going through the churn, and if you can keep yourself out of that, you’re going to be much happier.
