So, four days from now I will hopefully be sitting on my ass enjoying a well earned Guinness, and the title of triathlete.
My god, there is so much to get organized for this - it’s a good thing my transition bag is large enough to hold a small body. Even with having some gear cross over, you’re still basically packing for 3 races. And once I swap out the pedals on Bulletproof (she named herself after the ride last night), then it’s an extra pair of shoes to bring along to boot.
I’ve got a list a mile long of things that have to be packed up. At least the tri shorts & sports bra stay on the whole time… For the swim, wetsuit goes over it, plus goggles & swim cap. Then out of all that, into socks, shoes, helmet, sunglasses, camelbak, tri top, race belt, and depending on the temps, armwarmers and possibly bike pants over the shorts, get the bike off the rack and then it’s off to the races for the bike leg. Then rack the bike, out of the helmet, armwarmers, bike pants, & camelbak, on with the hat and then it’s the run. Throw another shoe change in there if you’ve got clipless pedals.
The folks doing the full Ironmans do have kickass transitions - of course, they DO earn them! They’ve got tons and TONS of volunteers - they have spotters who see you come in from the swim and off the bike so they can have your stuff ready, changing tents (think the dressing room at Loehmann’s, but you still can do a full change because it’s technically not “public nudity”), and what one gal described as “transition hand maidens”. They get your bike for you if at all possible, and then rack it again when you’re done. At the actual transition everyone gets their own person that snags the gear bag and has it right there in the changing tents. One of the gals said she had gone through mentally of what she’d need to remember to get from her gear bag and ended up not having to worry about it, as her volunteer just brought out every single thing in the bag and said “Need this? How about this? OK, this we’ll save for T2.”, etc. Oh, and wetsuit strippers.
In the shorter races, you’re on your own. My biggest concern is killing myself in the transitions. When my adrenaline gets going, I get REALLY clumsy. And I have no doubt I will have just a little bit of an adrenaline rush going on Sunday morning…
