With triathlon season warming up and the JLL Property Triathlon on the horizon at the end of June, we asked our soft tissue therapist and Triathlon Coach Emily to give us her best tips for preparing for your triathlon. She’s even given her top tips for racing at Dorney Lake:

Getting ready for JLL Property triathlon

(or other triathlons at Dorney Lake)

Dorney Lake is an ideal venue for a sprint distance triathlon - pancake flat course and calm lake water to swim in. It’s beginner-friendly and a good place for seasoned triathletes to gauge their fitness. After competing in more than a dozen races there, I’ve come up with some useful Dorney-specific tips to make your race day as smooth as the lake.

Getting there

From London, you can take your bike on to the train to Windsor & Eton Riverside or Windsor & Eton Central. From there, it’s a 3.5 mile ride to Dorney Lake, perfect for warm up. Be sure to ride down Bovney road which will get you to the start line side rather than the car park side at the far end of the lake. Take a look at this map.

If you are driving, make sure you get there at least 1.5 hours before your wave starts, so you have time to park and get down to the other end of the lake to register and check in.

Swim: Sighting

Normally, I would suggest to my athlete to sight every 6 strokes or so, and trust no one in a race. At Dorney Lake, the small buoys are actually attached to each other under the water like a lane rope. So depending on where your starting pontoon is, sight for the first buoy, from there, keep your head down and follow the ropes underneath to complete the swim lap.

For those of you who are doing the 2.2 km swim, the trick to holding a straight line is a symmetrical stroke. Bilateral breathing, enter your hands into the water at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock position with good full body rotation.

Bike: Counting laps

This is by far the trickiest part of the whole race… counting to 4 is surprisingly difficult when in race conditions… you can use 4 bits of sticky tape on the handle bar where you would take one off per lap, just be sure to remember whether you did it at the start of the lap or at the end of the lap (can you see now how confusing it could get?)

A bike computer is useful, just remember to start it, and that GPS can be slightly out. Unlike other sprint tri’s the bike course is 21.2 km.

Transition

For a sprint distance triathlon, every seconds count in transition. Think how hard it would be to take 1 min off your 5km run time or your 750 m swim time In transition, all it takes is to be calm and a little bit clever:

Lay out your transition with the shoe holes facing you; sunglasses open and inside helmet; helmet straps open with its inside facing up so you can flip it on to your head; race belt under your shoes ready to be stepped into.

Practice dismounting your bike on the fly:

If you’re a strong swimmer, ditch the wetsuit and use a swim skins tri suit instead. (At that time of the year, it is likely for a race there to be wetsuit optional).
Instead of bike shoes and clip-in (aka clipless) pedals, you can use courier straps on flat pedals and trainers. That way, you can roll straight off the bike and on to the run, for a 20km flat ride, bike shoes and clipping in make negligible difference (I’ve tried both multiple times).

Whether you use road cleats, MTB cleats or just trainers with straps, such a flat course at short distance, it makes no difference.

Instead of wearing socks, put plenty of talc powder in your shoes and go sock-less.

Wind

Dorney Lake is always windy, for some reason you’ll get a constant side or head wind wherever you are in the bike lap. This is the place for Time Trial bikes if you have one, if you don’t, practice riding on the drops and stay low. Make sure whatever you’re wearing is tight fitting and nothing is flapping about.

Pack list

Trisuit (wetsuit if you’re wearing one, lube for your neck)
Goggles (you may want tinted ones if it’s sunny)
Running shoes
Talc powder
Race belt for putting your race number on
Bike in good working order
Helmet
Sunglasses
Bike shoes if you’re using them.

Good luck, have fun!

Words by Emily Chong. Image by Scott Collier Photography.

Swim

To begin your triathlon journey the pool triathlon is a great starting point. As long as you have a trusty swimming costume and goggles, you're all set. Fancy, once piece triathlon suits, and expensive wetsuits for open swimming can come later if you decide you're keen. One thing I will advise against is using a regular surf wetsuit with the belief that "it'll work fine"... I used a friends' windsurf version for my very first open water event and it was a miracle I ever made it ashore! But you learn quickly, and these days my tri specific wetsuit, complete with far thinner and more flexible neoprene is certainly one of my key pieces of race equipment.

Bike

As a youngster who explored the countryside after school on his trusty mountain bike, I was familiar with riding off road, rather than on a road bike. And so, conveniently my first taste of racing a triathlon was an off road event, which I loved. Once the inevitable triathlon seed had been sown, we (my parents) were able to borrow a road bike from (another!) friend for the remainder of that summer until Christmas came around for my very own set of speedier wheels. My point here is that the *need* for expensive, aero tri-specific bicycles isn't necessarily justified until you've really sunk your teeth into a number of local level events, to test your appetite. Perhaps inevitably however, my time trial bike resplendent with electronic gears and carbon wheels has become a firm favourite piece of kit that I spend extra care looking after.

Run

I always believe that shoes and footwear are as exciting to me as they are everyone else, but I'm not so sure? Personally, I love the smell of a new pair of trainers when they appear from the shoebox, and so over the years of racing professionally I have become spoilt with the deliveries of new shoes that sponsors have kindly sent. Whether it be for training or racing, I'm a total sucker for a fresh set of trainers and I think after my bike these rank as 'next best favourite' items on my list, and I'll do my best to keep them in good condition. I might even have been known to machine wash shoes (which you are not supposed to... it's bad for both the washing machine AND the shoes apparently!) to keep them clean. It works a treat!

Accessories

As technology has rapidly progressed there are now all sorts of other 'extra' things that we *need* to train and race for triathlon, including (but not limited to) GPS running watches and cycling computers, electrolyte energy drinks and carbohydrate specific bars, racing helmets with visors and bike shoes with ratchets and straps. There are even special pedals that measure your power output (that the aforementioned cycle computer will tell you about) and many more I have limited time to write about!

Too many items to choose your favourite from I'd say ;)

Words by Fraser Cartmell.

Getting ready for JLL Property triathlon (or other triathlons at Dorney Lake)