🏊

Transition closes at 6:40. It does not close at 6:45 because you're nearly there.

Triathlon is the one race that takes your bike away before it starts. Transition opens early and shuts hard, usually 15 to 30 minutes before the first wave, and everything you meant to do inside it has to happen before that: rack the bike, pump the tires, lay out the run gear, get marked, find the chip. Your wave might not go for another forty minutes after the official start, which somehow makes people later rather than earlier. Ready Time works the morning backward from your wave, so the alarm is a number you already had last night.

Transition shuts an hour before you swim

First-timers plan to the swim start and get caught by a cutoff an hour earlier. Transition usually opens about two hours before the first wave and closes 15 to 30 minutes ahead of it, and once it's shut you race with whatever is already racked. Around that sit body marking, chip pickup, a parking lot that's a ten-minute walk from the gate, and a bathroom line that peaks at exactly the moment everyone else is setting up. Nobody makes an exception for the athlete jogging up with a bike at 6:45.

Your wave time is the number the plan hangs on

Put your own wave in and the rest lands behind it: breakfast, kit, drive, racking, setup, marking, bathroom, wetsuit. Most races want you on site 60 to 90 minutes before your wave, and if yours says otherwise the whole morning slides with it. At half and full distance the bike goes in at check-in the day before, so race morning is tires, bottles and bags instead. Set your spot up in the order you'll use it, bike shoes then run shoes, and photograph your rack position, because the row you memorized looks identical at 7am with three hundred bikes on it.

What to do the morning of a triathlon

Eat two to three hours before your wave, get there 60 to 90 minutes early, and do the transition work first while the field is still thin: bike racked in the right row, tires pumped, gear laid out on one small towel, gel taped to the top tube. Body marking and chip pickup next, then the bathroom, then the wetsuit with about fifteen minutes in hand. Swim a few hundred meters to warm up if the race allows it, and if it doesn't, get your arms moving on the bank instead of standing still in neoprene.

What to eat the morning of a triathlon

Whatever you've tested on a long brick session, roughly 300 to 600 calories, mostly carbs and easy on the stomach. Cereal and milk, a plain croissant, or rice cakes with jam, plus whatever coffee you normally drink, two to three hours before your wave. Sip an electrolyte bottle after that and take a gel about fifteen minutes before the swim if your start is late in the morning. Stop drinking much of anything half an hour out, so the swim isn't spent thinking about the toilet.