In a triathlon, your bike has to be racked well before your wave starts.

The cutoff that matters comes before the swim

It's easy to plan the morning around the swim start and then run into a cutoff an hour earlier. Transition usually opens about two hours before the first wave and closes 15 to 30 minutes ahead of it. After that you race with whatever you already set up. Body marking, chip pickup, a parking lot that turns out to be a ten-minute walk from the gate, and a bathroom line that peaks while everyone else is racking all have to fit inside that same window.

Everything hangs off your wave time

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 shifts 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. Photographing your rack position is standard advice, because the rows start to look alike once a few hundred bikes are on them.

What should you do the morning of a triathlon?

Get there 60 to 90 minutes before your wave 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. Body marking and chip pickup next, then the bathroom, then the wetsuit with about fifteen minutes in hand. The order helps because only the first part has a hard cutoff, and everything after it can happily happen in a queue.