Okay, on the bike, you want to have the right gear independent on what the first hundred yards is like on the bike. If it's a very hilly first hundred yards, then you don't want to be hardest gear possible or big gear; you want to be in easier gear. If it's virtually flat, you want to able to that speed really quickly. I always leave my cycling shoes in my bike at all times. That means I entrain, I never take my cycling shoes out of my pedals, off my pedals. Two things; one is I am always doing a transition. I am always getting feet out of my shoes when I finish my bike ride even in training. I am always putting my feet in my shoes when I start my bike ride. The other thing is I always know where my cycling shoes are so I never have to look around the house for.
When you find the gearing that you have, after you have done your bike warm up, if you find like you are in the wrong gearing then you click into the gearing that you think is going to be necessary for that first initial hundred yards. The only thing I like to do is once again go to the tires, check and make sure there is nothing sticking on them. So when I take off in the transition what I want to do is be able to get my feet in my shoes as quickly as possible. Now why do I already have my cycling shoes in my pedals? Because time is important, you don't want to have static time for you to sit there. You don't want to get out of the swim and have to put on your cycling shoes when you could be doing on while you are already moving. So typically what I will do is I will build that race pace speed and then I put my shoes on.
So I am already basically making up time that on someone that sitting there in transition and putting their cycling shoes on. I did one race in Cancun, Mexico where I had really good swim, there were three of us that were out and lead group of the water and about three miles into the bike, we were going pretty fast, three miles in a bike, Olivier Marceau who later that year won the world championships, he caught us. He is a good cyclist but I looked down, he still had his feet out of the shoes because his goal is to getting that draft and he is going as hard as he could but he want three miles of this feet out of his shoes he wanted to catch us, get on draft then put his feet in his shoes but that's how important that time is.
So when you have your cycling shoes, you want to make sure that you have space to put in your foot but you don't want to have strap all the way off because if you have strap off it's more like could you caught in the gearing. So you want to take your Velcro strap and ideally is when you have one Velcro strap for sprint or Olympic distance. For iron-man distance, for comfort reasons, you might want to have two or three straps and again iron-man transitions are lot different than doing sprint or Olympic distance. So anyways, you put the Velcro strap right on the edge so that it still stays on there but you still have plenty of room to put your foot in and you do that for the other side.
The other thing I like to do is I like to always carry two clip shots with me on the bike for Olympic distance. For sprint distance I won't carry any clip shots but what I like to do is for me, I like to swim, get on the bike, 20 minutes into the bike ride, I rip off one clip shot, then 20 minutes from the end of the bike ride, I rip off another clip shot and that's if I am out there for an hour for my bike basically. Then I will grab two clip shots and take them out in the run.
Real briefly let me just show you a quick transition basically from the swim to the bike. Eric if you, kind of, hold my bike right there, what you want to do is there is a couple of things. You can either have your helmet right like this and again you want to have it unbuckled and it all depends if your handle bar can hold the helmet in a good spot. You got to be careful though by putting your helmet right here because if there is people like coming ahead of you in transition area, all they have to do is just bump it and your helmet might fall off, alright. It didn't that time but it could fall off because there is jostling going on. So you might want to just want to have your helmet and just have it on the ground but have the buckle out and again before the race starts, just do this a couple of times. Just to get used to what it's like, just to buckle your helmet.
It seems so simple but on race morning, you could begin like, Oh God! I got to get going, I got to get going, I got to get going, I got to get going, it's hard to put to buckle your helmet. One race I tried to cheat the system where you are supposed to have your helmet, you are supposed to be able to buckle your helmet and only be able to get one finger in there and I thought okay, I am going to cheat the system a little bit and so what I did I buckled my helmet ahead of time and give it a little bit more space because transition times are so important; I wanted to save those extra two three seconds I not have to buckle my helmet.
So I left the helmet like this. I went and did the race, I came out of the water, got on my helmet, I just took in just jammed it down as hard as I could and I got it on but then on my three miles into the bike, my helmet just tight and it's choking my neck, I am like you know I picked up someone else's helmet.
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