Bike and Transition Skills
Typically triathletes recognise that spending time working on their swimming technique is important and will be rewarded with increased efficiency and faster times. If you believe this to be true then shouldn’t the same be the case for bike and transition skills?
Watching age-group races it often strikes me that many athletes are giving away time that could be saved if they were better at some basic skills.
In these sessions you’ll be working on:
- Cornering quickly and confidently, keeping momentum through the corners and getting back up to race pace as soon as possible.
- Dealing with U-turns, making the most of the space available and saving energy.
- Minimising freewheeling and eliminating unnecessary braking in corners and on descents.
- Keeping aerodynamic and maximising use of tri-bars/drops – not just on long flat straights.
- Having your bike-shoes on the bike for transition 1 and transition 2.
- Smoothly mounting the bike while keeping forward momentum.
- Putting feet into bike shoes with minimal loss of speed.
- Removing feet from bike shoes with minimal loss of speed.
- Dismounting bike smoothly while keeping forward momentum.
- Optimising your transition routine to eliminate wasted energy and save time.
None of these skills are particularly difficult but it is necessary to first learn the correct way of doing them. Then you need to practise until you can execute them consistently during races when you are fatigued and under pressure.
Once mastered you can expect to save anything from 30 seconds to several minutes in every race you do. Even at the lower end that can mean a significant improvement in your race positions. You’ll also get the satisfaction of outperforming the majority of your competitors and making them work harder to keep up.
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