The moment has arrived.  You’re just minutes away from the start of your triathlon!  Physiologically your metabolism is speeding up, your breathing is accelerated, your heart rate speeds up.  Cells of your immune system are on alert ready to deal with injury and infection.  Your nervous system redistributes blood – constricting flow to your gut, giving you butterflies – shunting it to our major muscle groups, lungs, heart and brain.

Steroids are released into your bloodstream.  Testosterone levels are climbing (yes, in both men and women).  Adrenaline and cortisol surge into your brain, stimulating the release of dopamine and giving you a rush.

Your pupils are dilated, you’re breathing is deep and rhythmic, your muscles are coiled, your brain and body are fused for impending action.

This is all great if you’re preparing to sprint (flee) or fight.  Maybe not so much for the aerobic, steady state exercise of a triathlon!  It’s too inefficient – you’re burning calories you’ll need later on, and you’re in a hyped up state that will make it difficult to go out at your pace; instead creating an oxygen debt you’ll have to repay later on by going slower than you’d like.

It’s very important to practice the start and transitions of a triathlon under pressure.  It’s important to practice handling yourself in the melee of a swim start, staying calm when your shoes won’t slip on easily in the swim-bike transition, managing your initial running pace so you don’t fall flat on your face in the bike-run transition.  (Side story: I was so freaked out by the chaos of the swim start in my first open water triathlon that I waited until everyone was in the water before starting out.  It was pretty cool to then see how many people I could pass, but it cost me a lot of time to be the last one starting.  Not a great strategy.)

So…practice being in mass swim starts at Grant Ranch lake.  Practice doing a micro triathlon where you set a time goal that’s very dependent on efficient transitions.  (Try swimming 100 yards, biking two miles, and running ½ mile with a time goal.)  Race a few of your triathlon training buddies using this format, creating time handicaps, so you will all be in the physiological state describe at the beginning of this article.  You’ll be creating the conditions you want to learn to manage and getting to practice it.  It’ll pay off in the racing season.

Tim Engels, M.A., sports psychology consultant with Mile High Multisport LLC, is a sports psychology consultant and counselor in Denver, CO.  You can contact him at (303) 956-5691 or tim@timspractice.com and find him at https://www.timspractice.com/.