Triathlon: 5 Tips For Saving Energy On Your Next Long Ride

By: Darcie Murphy, CTS Senior Coach Category

How fast can you take it off? More lube, a little cut here a little cut there, sleeves verse no sleeves, whatever it takes to make you faster. Triathlons consist of three main disciplines: swimming, cycling and running; however, Jack Johnstone and Don Shananhan (creators of the triathlon craze) should have considered a forth discipline: transitions. Transitions can often make or break your event. For example, in an Olympic-distance race, if you were to improve by 40 seconds on transition 1 (T1), you would save almost seven seconds per mile on the run! The first transition is where you can make up the most time, especially when you are competing in a wetsuit.

Lubrication

To help take your wetsuit off faster apply non-petroleum-based lubrication around the ankles and wrists (a petroleum base lubrication will eat away at the rubber of your wetsuit over time). There are many different types of lube you can use; the most common is Bodyglide®, but you can also use KY-jelly® and even PAM® cooking spray! The purpose of lubing up, beyond the fact that it feels good, is to prevent the wetsuit from bonding to your skin, and hence prevent an uncomfortable and slow transition. Additional lubrication can be put around the neckline, or if you have a sleeveless wetsuit, around the shoulders, to help prevent chafing.

Strategic Cutting

Finding the right size wetsuit can be somewhat of a challenge. All wetsuits go by a height-to-weight chart for sizing, however not everyone fits this mold. More often than not, the wetsuit will fit your torso area, but be slightly too long on your legs and arms. The legs of a wetsuit should not be all the way down to your feet; a proper fit will seem short, at or slightly above the ankles. If the wetsuit is too long in the legs and the arms, it is common to make alterations. Shortening the legs and the arms provides a larger opening, allowing you to become efficient in taking the wetsuit off. However, keep in mind that by cutting your wetsuit you are modifying the amount of water it may or may not retain.

Sleeves or No Sleeves

One of the biggest questions when finding the right fit is sleeves versus no sleeves. The purpose of a wetsuit is to make you more buoyant and to reduce friction in the water. Becoming more buoyant raises your body higher out of the water, resulting in less surface area to plow through the water during your race. Additionally, the wetsuit reduces the amount of drag in the water, facilitating an improvement in your overall glide. Sleeveless wetsuits are good for warm-water swims (just on the verge of USAT regulations), and you may feel you have a greater range of motion as well. A full-body wetsuit will help keep your core temperature warmer during long cold swims, will make you more buoyant in the water, and will increase the circumference of your arms, which allows you to push more water with each stroke. In short, go for a full-body wetsuit unless you’re swimming in warm water.

Prepare To Strip

An important time saver in the swim-to-bike transition (T1) is to wear your racing clothes under your wetsuit. The clothes you wear, cycling shorts or a triathlon kit, under your wetsuit will not create more drag in the water, they will only save you time in T1. Putting dry clothes on a wet body is nearly impossible, and may cost you up to five minutes!

The art of taking it off! Getting out of your wetsuit is where you may lose the greatest amount of time. Some hints to keep in mind: start taking it off as soon as you are out of the water. Leave your cap on your head, find the wetsuit’s pull cord, unzip and peel while you run. By the time you reach your bike, you should have your wetsuit around your waist. The next step is to snake the wetsuit down to around your ankles, step on it with one foot and pull the other free, then repeat with the other foot. Remember, you never want to sit down in a transition … always keep moving.

Lubrication, the right fit, cutting and good technique make for fast and efficient transitions. Get lubed up and ready to go!

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1. Spiegel, Leproult and Van Cauter, Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function. The Lancet (1999;354:1435-1439).

Kelli Emmett is a Senior Coach for Carmichael Training Systems, Inc. (CTS) and a professional mountain racer for the Ford Cycling Team. As the winner of the 24 Hours of Moab mountain bike race in the Solo Women category, she’s an expert on sleep and sleeplessness. To find out what CTS can do for you, visit www.trainright.com.

© 2005, Carmichael Training Systems, Inc.