Tri / Triathlon / Triathlons - do they float your boat?

Cycling years, all varieties of racing. Took up sea swimming in April, doing about 5-8km per week, three races so far with one 2nd place finish in a 3km distance. Have done some running on and off in the past. Never ever done all three at once.

Lads I swim with are triathletes and invited me to their end of season relay tri for a bit of fun. 200m swim, 5km bike, 1.5km run. How hard could it be.

My team decided I’d go first, went out on the swim like the clappers. Was joint 1st out of the water by a good margin with a very experienced iron man. I guess this was where my first bit of inexperience showed. I tried to dry my feet and put socks on, but I’d say I had one sock half on when I saw the other guy I got out of the water with already on his bike. Eventually got out on the bike and got the gap down from 1 min to 30s by t2, where I showed even greater inexperience. Swapped my insoles over to my unlaced trainers and laced them up before setting off on 1.5km run, which I done as fast as I expected.

Overall I’d say i was top 3 on swim time on the day and definitely fastest bike, but my transitions were absolutely tragic. Guy I ride with most weekends raced a lot of super league and gave me some tips for next time once he stopped laughing at me. Was fast and furious though, still got race lung today.

Given me a taste to try a full triathlon next year though, I’ll probably go straight in with Olympic distance as I find I settle in better with longer swim and bike races, and hopefully that’s the case for a tri.

Great you enjoyed your first full tri and the good news is sorting out your kit and transitions is pretty easy. Just speak to your experienced mates or watch a couple of GTN videos and after a little bit of time practicing swift transitions in your brick sessions you'll have it down in no time. Race your mates in training and maybe enter some smaller/shorter local events just for practice and a bit of fun. I've made loads of silly mistakes that have cost me places but luckily most of them were in less important local events so even though i let it annoy me at the time just say to yourself every mistake you make in practice should be one less you'll make on race day. Saying that i did miss out on a podium at a local sprint event a couple of weeks ago by 5 seconds and i lost about 15 in T1 because my one of my helmet buckles had dropped inside and got caught in one of the vents so had to unhook it. Little things like that are a lot harder when your HR is doing 180 bpm with others around flying out of transition and your stressed. Good luck and you'll be hooked in no time.

Aside from a tri this weekend that I’m not able to do, I think that’s pretty much it for events in Ireland til next year, but I’m certainly keen to try a few next year life permitting (baby due in January).

I can’t see myself doing any brick sessions in the near future, but I’ll be adding a few runs to my week going forward.

Good luck with training and the baby. We're expecting our first in January as well so i expect 15 hour training weeks will be of the cards for a while too. I have a 9 mile each way commute which i run once a week so that should keep me ticking over in the meantime and once she's settled into a routine I'm hoping to be able to add runs off the bike and swimming plus bike and run intervals on my days off as I'm dropping down to a four day week as soon as she arrives. Thats the plan but we'll see as i could well be on my knees by March 😕

Ah congrats to you too! We’ll be similarly sleep deprived! I have very easy access to sea swimming (I live opposite the pier), and I’ve been swimming pretty much every weekday morning since April, so I’m hoping to keep that up chop/swell permitting. Just received a smart turbo too that I’m hoping to squeeze a few ad hoc sessions a week in on, and the same for runs.

Like you I could be on my knees by March!

Now the seasons over hows everyone reflecting on the season? Plans for the off season or targets/ambitions for next year already?

First triathlon ever in April so predictably instead of addressing my major weakness (swim) I’m out tomorrow to ride the bike route. Not sure what I expect to learn from this!

First duathlon tomorrow in the pouring rain and a Gale. Yey.
Do people usually warm up both events or just run? I was thinking maybe bike rollers gently for 20-30 mins at home in morning (like I would for an evening bike race) to start legs waking up, but then only run at the venue to save soaking bike shoes etc.

Have you got time for a ramp to threshold ride on the rollers tonight? No need to ride in the morning then just do your usual run warm up before the race. Good luck and don't go out too hard from the gun if you know your paces just use your Garmin and stick to that. Duathlons go off really fast sometimes and it's really easy to wreck your legs in the first 2k of the run.

Thanks!
Haha I will definitely go off too fast, I already know that! Luckily I have very little run fitness so I’ll be backing off after 1km.
I rode this morning so won’t do rollers tonight, but I still might spin the legs early on tomorrow as I’m not racing until 11.
Main worry is my useless dead hands being too cold to undo and fasten shoes once I finish the bike!

And if you've got a decent drive to the race take a bit longer stretching and opening up your hips and hip flexors pre race and stretch your hip flexors and do some glute activation exercises after your morning spin if you do one. Have fun and remember everyone else's legs will feel like shit at the start of the second run as well so breathe deep suck up the pain and your legs will start working eventually. Good luck 💪

My legs feel like shit everyday anyway so I actually find brick training no different to normal!

Wow you weren’t kidding about the second run feeling bad! Basically legs felt like I was still riding a bike. Couldn’t have gone faster if I wanted to, my legs had no spring.
One thing I realised is my training was fine but I need to do bricks with harder biking. I absolutely hammered the bike leg, great training for mtb xc I’m sure, but hadn’t done that in brick training so legs on the run were much worse than when I trained.
Also made me think that I need to do more of those kind of bike efforts as they’ll be great for xc racing. 40 mins approx of hard riding trying to stay on a big gear up all the little hills. I get now why my mate used to do tt’s to train for mtb!

Sounds like you enjoyed it though if your already planning training for more. Bricks are really important but the run off the bike has to be on either tired legs after a long bike or on legs full of lactic after a hard bike. Most of the bricks don't even have to be long just a couple of k off the bike at varying paces until the legs feel normal again plus one quality race specific brick a week. So many times I've led off the bike in tri and duathlons only to get caught on the run despite being a decent stand alone runner. Putting them together harder than most people realise but i come from a strong cycling background and have seen plenty of tasty runners dissappear up the road from the gun just to grind to a halt as soon as they start trying to put some power down on the bike.

Yeh definitely, already entered a tri in spring, probably do another duathlon just for some training in feb and might do Hathersage Hilly in summer with my wife. I’m a useless swimmer so this will always just be for fun and to fill gaps between local bike races!

Good luck with the training. I hate swimming too but have too because they're aren't enough big duathlons locally. Offroad duathlons are my favourite and the most fun but 2-3 a year isn't enough for me. I really enjoy the training but love the buzz of a big mass start race.

I’d love to have a go at an off road duathlon but not found any in Manchester/ peaks area

Having done 3 whole sprint races this year and with one Olympic booked for next year I’ve accidentally bought a new tri bike…

Had been eying up a cervelo p series ultegrs for about a year and one in my size got dropped in price again from 3,800 down to 3100 and finally 2,650 last week so couldn’t resist.

Just need to sell the parts off my old bike to lessen the guilt, and perhaps book in a couple more races for next year ahead of a hopeful return to Ironman in 2023!

While I know the bike is probably marginally slower, the experience of riding my p2 with rim brakes in training this year was truly terrifying compared to all my other bikes which are disc braked.

Let’s see the new and old bikes then!

New one hasn’t arrived yet.

This is the old one and a stock pic of the new one…

Will be moving the di2, power meter, saddle and maybe cockpit across, wheels are already sold, so di2 brifters and tri rig front brake to go…

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How much for the Tri rig? Are you getting rid of the new saddle?

Is the Tri rig one of the “newer” ones with the flat back plate? Not one with the angled backplate to fit the nose cone?

Bit further to go but pretty sure there's one over at Llandegla each year.

With swim Chorlton X Tri is off road bike.

Sounds good.

I think an off road triathlon will be in my future for 2022/2023. Ideally I think I’d like something that is roughly equivalent to middle/half iron in duration so maybe 4-5 hrs ish total.

Roughly how long would the bike leg be? I’ve done some limited googling but struggling to find something that jumps out at me.