A First Time Triathlete's Guide to What's Important for Preparing for Your First Triathlon

I did my first triathlon at the Marin Triathlon in 2008 and wanted to share my experiences for any other potential first time triathletes. It was a greatly rewarding experience that still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. I think most anyone can do a triathlon if they put their mind and body to it. In researching a triathlon, you’ll be bombarded with information. I want to share how I did it and what I found out was important to me.

While I researched triathlons fairly extensively before doing my first one, I am by no means an expert. I am only sharing my experiences to help give you a perspective that might help you. Use only as directed and please consult a doctor before trying. Your mileage will vary.

Learn the basics
My wife bought me two books. One was Triathlon Training in Fours A Week (By Eric Harr) and the other was Complete Triathlon Book from Triathlete Magazine. I also found a great number of good resources on the Internet. The book by Eric Harr I thought was the best for me. It was conversational and really spoke to me as a first-timer. I highly recommend the book.

I also found that Youtube is a great resource for instructional videos on just about anything. If you do searches on triathlon you’ll see a lot of free instructional videos, many by coaches and champion triathletes on how to run, bike and swim faster and better. There are a lot of great instructional videos on how to set up the transition area effectively. You can also see what a triathlon start looks like and how people transition during a race.

The most useful videos I found were on swim technique. I knew how to get across a pool but I didn’t know how to do it efficiently. Learning how to swim properly and then trying it in the pool really helped improve my swim efficiency. If I had to do it all over again, I would have taken a master’s swimming program. I improved my swim efficiency by 20-30% just by improving my technique. I used less energy and reduced my post swim soreness by a lot after knowing how to swim better (more later).

Buying the equipment
For cycling, I needed to get some new equipment to get started. After a few months of research I decided on a Trek 1000. I bought the previous year’s model and got a nice discount on it (I ended up paying $600 for it brand new). I had to buy some other equipment like a bike toolkit, spare tube, water bottle cage, tire pump (or you may decide to use CO2 cartridges), bicycle jersey and triathlon pants (the kind that have some padding but are made of fast drying materials). People tell me you really need to use bicycle clips and that it can increase your efficiency by 20-25%. I used a regular shoe cage and pedaled in my running shoes. That seemed fine and it made me T2 time really fast because all I had to do was hop off the bike, take off my helmet, stretch my legs a bit and go.

I already had a nice pair of running shoes so I didn’t need much there. Besides, I was planning to wear the same clothes as the bicycle portion so I didn’t need new clothes.

Swimming can be very expensive. If you are doing an open water swim in cold water you probably want to consider a wet suit. After much research, I found the best deals at two places. Sports Basement has a nice rental program where I could rent a high quality wetsuit for $20 for a day. The sales people there are pretty experienced – in fact the person who helped me with my rental actually coached triathletes so I got some great advice from him. The best place to rent in my opinion is Fit 2 Race (www.f2r.com). The people there are super nice, super helpful and the prices are very reasonable. I rented a suit for 30 days I think for $50 (that included the cost of sending the suit back after the race). They have nice wetsuits, have prompt service and if you decide to buy you can apply the rental price towards their very reasonably priced suits. Try them out. It’s a solid deal, particularly if you are unsure about making the investment in your own suit.

I found it invaluable to take a lesson in open water swimming. I took a class with www.swimart.com which really helped me understand what open water swimming was about. If anything it alleviated many of my fears. After I decided to jump in and take the class, I signed up for my triathlon a few weeks later knowing that I could handle the cold water, knowing the techniques I needed to know and having gone through a practice swim or two at Aquatic Park. Leslie Thomas is the proprietor of Swim Art and is an excellent instructor. I took one class and did one group swim and did a few of my own swims at Swim Art and I was set

All told with equipment, lessons, registration, clothing, race nutrition I probably spent about $1200 and that was going really on the cheap (and renting a wetsuit, not keeping it). The bulk of the expenditure was on the cycling portion of course. Registration for this eco-friendly race was over $200.

Also check out the course when you get a chance. I drove the course the day before and I could better plan how I was going to expend my energy. I noticed that the cycle and run had a lot of hills which would present themselves at the beginning and the finish of each section. I metered my energy a lot better knowing that.

Training
I was surprised to find that my body was able to complete the required distances individually. I could run 6 miles and have done so many times in the past so I wasn’t too worried about that portion. I was worried about the bike and swim portion since I really never went anywhere close to the distances required.

I think for most people it’s a matter of mind over matter. Build yourself up slowly and you’ll probably find that you can handle these distances at a nice comfortable pace. Over time you can work to improving your times once you have the confidence to know that you can complete it. I never thought I could do 80x25m laps in the pool but once you find a comfortable pace and style, you can get it done. For my practice sessions, I ended up swimming 2km per workout and it took me about 40-45 minutes. To get to that level took me about 4-5 training sessions. I swam about a mile each time I went to Aquatic Park in the open water just so I knew I would be able to make the whole swim and to get comfortable with being out in the open water, swimming in near zero visibility.

Technique was really important here. I found that I was not swimming “long” and “flat”. By reaching a bit more and raising my butt a bit higher than usual I produced less drag. Also I was not gliding enough on the reach portion of my stroke. I found that if I glided (almost like a sidestroke), I was able to swim with a lot more power and less energy. The most important improvement to my swim stroke was on the very finish of my stroke. I tended to lift my hands out of the water too early and didn’t let my hand basically touch my leg before coming out. I changed my stroke to push down further on the last part of my catch (almost as if I was pushing something down) and then brush my hand against my thigh to make sure I was doing my entire stroke. This really helped my stroke efficiency immensely. They always say swimming is all about technique and I didn’t experience that until I actually made some of these improvements.

Do focus on the brick workouts. The transitions between swim and bike and from bike to run are pretty critical. The bike to run (or T2) is particularly important because that’s when your body wants to rebel. After being on a bike for some time and then getting off to run is really difficult. Your legs don’t feel like working right and it sometimes takes ½ mile to even a mile before you feel like you are hitting a decent run stride. The more you practice this, the more you feel comfortable with it. And the less likely you’ll injure yourself. I made sure I could do a 25mile bike/6 mile run in practice before I felt confident I could finish the race.

I didn’t practice any swim to bike transitions mostly because it was inconvenient for me to do so. When I did it in the race, I did find that after swimming I was a little bit dizzy from being horizontal and then going vertical but it was not much. I kept things slow and didn’t try to look like a superman running from swim to the transition area. My T1 time was pretty quick (just a few minutes) so even though I felt I was going slow I really wasn’t.

Couple of key pointers during the race!
I found it was super-critical to ask about the swim path before the race. When there are tides at play, you can really get yourself in a hole if you swim the wrong course. There were strong tides (mostly in our favor) in the Marin Triathlon however, if you didn’t play it right, it could be your worst enemy. We were facing a big right to left tide (if you are looking out from the shore) so in order to make the turn around the first buoy you really had to shoot far right to make it around. I followed the advice and shot around the first buoy nicely. What nobody explained to me was what to do with the 2nd buoy which was a little bit further out and I missed the buoy by only about 2 yards. But it was too late. The tide had already swept me and I had to fight the tide to swim back around the 2nd buoy so I wouldn’t be disqualified. Well, I had never experienced swimming against a strong tide because I had done all of my practice swimming in a pool and in the Aquatic Park in San Francisco, which has a barrier around most of the swimming area. It felt terrible. The buoy literally looked liked it had a motorboard engine and was puttering away from me at a good clip. I gave myself an extra push and swam like crazy (swallowing some water in the process) and eventually made it around but it did suck out a significant amount of energy. I was surprised at how powerful the tides could be. When people tell me that you can make no, or negative progress in a strong tide, I understood it 100%. I almost felt helpless from the strength of the tide. From then on, I respected the tides much more and gave myself good distance around the buoys but without knowledge of the tides you will be flying blind.

Pace yourself well on the swim because things always look closer than they really are. You think you are close to the finish line and you wonder why it’s taking so long to get there. Practicing sighting is also really key. I’m not a terribly good sighter but having practiced the basics a couple of times helped me a lot in swimming more straight. Ask around for the path you need to swim in the race. Otherwise you look around wondering why those people are swimming there, and why those other people are swimming over there. You can get confused about the right thing to do. I popped up my head several times wondering whether I was on the right path or not.

Another quick story. Remember that first buoy I told you about. Well a bunch of swimmers aimed more left while a good chunk of the people followed the advice and went as far right as they could. The people who aimed left looked like they would get to the buoy much faster and looked like they would get a leg up on the competition. When they hit the current, they struggled mightily to get back around the buoy. Because it was a timed start and I was in the 40 division we could see the first couple of groups go out and how they approached the first buoy, I could hear the chuckles from the more experienced triathletes who were looking at the people who decided to cut a straighter path to the first buoy. “Look at them burning all that energy just on the first turn” they laughed amongst themselves. We all headed far right on the swim.

While I was warned about all the bumping and bruising during the swim start, I didn’t have it too bad. I started a bit towards the back and while I bumped into people and got bumped, everyone was there to have fun and it wasn’t a big deal. Just remain calm and know that everyone is in the same boat. If you feel someone touch your leg or you crash into someone ahead of you, don’t freak out. It would be very rare to have it worse than what people warn you about and your not in the elite bunch anyway.

During the bike portion it’s easy to expend a lot of energy to make a good time. If you have good endurance that’s a good thing to do. However, if you aren’t a great runner, you need to conserve a little bit of energy for the last couple of miles on the run. I got saucer eyes when I was on the bike and probably pushed it a little bit faster than I should. Luckily, I didn’t get injured during the run especially as I felt my legs were getting very tired after mile three of the run.

One observation that I made during the race was that each course has its own psychology. For the Marin, it was an out and back course which means you go out and come back the same way. So as I was a five to six miles into the bicycle, the elites were already starting to come back. This wasn’t as bad as the beginning of the run where there were people finishing the race just as you were starting your grueling six miles. It was depressing for a little while seeing all of the people coming back and finishing the race just as I was starting. In a multi-lap race, I’m sure there are similar feelings as people lap you.

Nutrition during the race

You’ve probably been able to do a good workout without eating or even drinking. In a triathlon you are burning a lot of energy and can literally run out of gas, resulting in “bonking”. I was surprised at how much athletes can eat during an event. One cyclist I know eats everything in site during the rest stations. He eats a sandwich or two and eats goo and Powerbars and drinks constantly. Find what your stomach can tolerate during strenuous activity and eat lots of it. I cramped up for the first time in a long time at mile 3 of my run. That same cyclist also recommended Enduralyte pills for cramping. I wish I had taken some but I was still able to work through my cramp.

For me it was Clif Goo’s. They are mostly organic and don’t have all the nasty chemicals. They seem to digest pretty well and they are easy to store and eat.

Couple of other tips.

I hear static stretching is actually not that good for you and that in fact, it can increase your chance of injury.. There’s a NYtimes article on that. So it’s better to warm up by doing dynamic stretching - or basically by just warming up. Some people go for a swim or a run beforehand. For me, that doesn’t work – it just gets me more tired.

One other interesting advice which worked for me when I got my cramp during my run was to just stop and massage it. That worked wonders versus stretching or doing anything else. Forcing yourself to eat at regular intervals is also critical to make sure you don’t run out of energy or cramp up. As I mentioned before, I heard people swear by Enduralytes although I’ve only tried them once.

Also, settle down as quickly as you can in the race. You’ll be so hyped up that you’ll want to go faster than you had planned. In addition, you form will likely go out the window. Try to settle down a bit and concentrate a bit on your form. I took stock a couple of times during the race to think – hey, this is great – I’m competing in a triathlon. There’s nothing like that in the moments before the swim start and as you are running and biking. Take in the scenery, relax a bit and enjoy. A triathlon is not a sprint after all so make sure you are pacing yourself well throughout.

Make it a community

I hadn’t done much biking and I certainly never hung around with the triathlon community but the people who punish themselves by doing these sports are really a very community minded group. When cyclists have a flat tire, you won’t believe how often others ask to stop and help. And they love to give advice to each other and help out. Really tap into the knowledge source. Also, triathlon training can be quite boring, so it’s nice to have a partner or two on those long bicycle rides, runs and swims (although with swimming it’s pretty monotonous). You can use a solution like Qlubb to organize (where I work) and plan workout sessions and share photos of the event afterwards.

Don’t forget to keep working out afterwards. You are probably in the best shape of your life. Might as well maintain it.

After you get through the finish line celebrate! The feeling is exhilarating and surprisingly you’ll be wanting to sign up for the next one.