Biking off the swim

[PB Triathlon Editor]

Triathlon coaches for years have preached the importance of adding brick sessions to your training routine at the appropriate times. How many times have you heard, ‘you must practice running off the bike,’ or ‘you need to do your brick sessions to avoid those jelly legs.’ The idea of training the body to be able to cope with the strange sensation of switching from bike to run is essential to help with a smooth second Transition (T2). In terms of time spent practicing the first transition, this often gets overlooked while many would argue that the first transition is probably harder then the second. There are several factors to consider:

• Navigating a clear path through the numerous Triathletes looking for the same exit.
• Wetsuit removal
• Changing from being horizontal in the water to vertical causing dizzyness (vascular shunting)
• Unfamiliarity of the transition area (not if you arrived early and practiced!)



Vascular Shunting
Vascular shunting is the concept that blood needs to be moved from an area of the body that was working hard to a new area that is now performing work. It would make sense that any muscle doing a lot of work needs more O2 supplied to it then an area not doing much work. If suddenly an area of the body stops working and another starts, the body quickly needs to shunt more blood to the new area and this takes some time.

You CAN improve the rate at which the body adapts to this through PRACTICE! Condition your body to get Blood from one set of muscles to another. In a Gym with a good spin bike and convenient run machine you can get this transition practised quite easily. However with T1 it is not so easy.

When moving from the horizontal swim position to the vertical run position while you exit the water and find your way to Transition the blood is draining from the arms and shoulder regions and making its way to the legs. This draining effect can leave you feeling dizzy and light headed making the whole process that much more difficult.

So often, biking off the Swim is just not practical or the opportunity is just not available to practice. Bikes on poolside, the side of a lake/river even if the weather is good is just not realistic due to safety, speed to get ready, security of left bikes etc.

Swim For Tri host lake swimming on Saturday mornings in the Spring and Summer. Many people ride after the swim but it takes at least 20mins to get changed and organised. You can recreate the intensity of a race exit and entry into T1 but so much harder to quickly get out on the bike. Without question this is a tricky discipline to organise but the benefits to your bike performance will be dramatic especially for the shorter distance races. If you have raced before, you might have experienced the sensation that it takes a while to get your bike legs warm after the swim. You have had a good swim but then your bike performance suffers due to not being able to hit top speed during the first part of your ride. Often the best advice Tri coaches can offer is to start kicking your legs harder for the last 200m of the swim section. This should help to get some blood flow down into the legs and is worthwhile but you need to be careful that this kick action does not slow you due to a now poor streamline position from kicking too hard. The swim leg kick is a tough one to get right. A fraction too much movement from the knee and you add drag. This will create more work for the arms as they have to drag a poor body position through the water. As you increase your legkick you also run the risk of cramping more.

If your local pool has a gym, try to lay out your kit in your locker for a fast, but safe exit from the pool. Swim kit off, gym kit on and hit one of the spinbikes ASAP. Better yet, look for an Endless Pool with a Cyclops Pro Spin bike right next to it.

Practicing biking after the swim after a short run (exit from water to bike) will help you control the dizzy unpleasant sensation on race day as you are more prepared for the entry into T1. Practice transitioning into T1 and stop wasting the first 20mins of your bike leg by not biking at your best. Get used to getting vertical after long swims so the effect is not such so detrimental on race day.


About the author of this blog post
Article reproduced courtesy of Dan Bullock M.I.O.S who runs Swim for Tri and is a highly regarded coach, winning awards as London Region Coach of the Year in 2005/6 and 220 Coach of the Year in 2005. Contact him on 020 7650 7880 or by email [e-mail] or through their website: swimfortri.com

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