One of the things we’ve found challenging about doing this triathlon is how little information there is out there in terms of the how-to’s. As I said on Wednesday, there are a few folks out there who are talking about this and competing, but not a whole lot, and we have yet to find any cohesive lists of best practices, checklists or anything similar. Even the short video we were part of ahead of the triathlon will only give the smallest taste of what is involved in doing an accessible triathlon.
So while part of the funds we raise for increasing accessibility will go towards new racing chairs for myTeamTriumph Canada, part of the funds will cover the cost of filming and editing a how-to video on accessible triathlon – the first of it’s kind that we can find!
But fundraising, filming and editing all take time, and in the meantime, we still want to start getting this information out, so today I’m going to publish our checklists!
Next to training, checklists are some of the most important elements of a successful triathlon. We will be trialing three checklists this Sunday.
The first checklist is for packing. There are so many things to remember, that we have been known to forget a bike attachment when we went for a bike touring day or goggles when we went for our cross the bay swim. But race day is no time to forget important equipment, so here is our packing list:
As you can see, it is all organized into the different parts of the race, so that we can easily pull our equipment together and then pack it into the car in a somewhat-organized fashion!
The next checklist is for transition. Transition is the time between each of the parts of the triathlon – from swim to bike and from bike to run. Your overall time on triathlon includes your transitions between each of the disciplines, so you want to do these as fast as possible. However, there are a lot of steps to remember (once again) and so we thought we would create a checklist for transition as well:
We’re using myTeamTriumph‘s naming formula here, so the ‘captain’ is the athlete using the chair and the ‘angel’ is the person pushing/pulling the chair. So in this case, I am the ‘captain’ and Trevor is my ‘angel’. Although I have some capacity to do some of these things for myself, many captains do not, and we thought it would be best to come up with a checklist that could be used by as many teams as possible. (If you are part of a team and think we are missing something, we would love to hear from you, and will work quickly to update this list to be more inclusive in whatever way possible).
Our final checklist is for nutrition. Race nutrition is incredibly important. You can train as hard as you want and be as organized as you want, but if you get this wrong, then you’re still going to be in trouble. Nutrition is also an incredibly personal thing, and so the nutrition checklist below (that’s for my ‘angel’ Trevor) is likely not going to work as well for anyone else. But it gives you a sense of what you might include.
Also, because we are doing such a short (sprint) Triathlon, our nutrition checklist doesn’t include anything for me as the captain. We will definitely have to figure out what to do with this as we stretch out to longer and longer races, but here’s our first stab at it:
So, after months of training and planning, everything packed into the car, our race kit picked up, transition scoped out and an early night planned, there are just a few brief hours left between us and our first triathlon.
If you’re in the Barrie area tomorrow, we’d love to see you there, otherwise stay tuned for my race report on Monday!
Heather R. Morgan 