Triathlon for Beginners

A triathlon consists of three disciplines, and that holds both the difficulty and the opportunity for beginners. The difficulty: there is three times as much to learn. The opportunity: because the load spreads across three movement patterns, your body tolerates more training than it would from running alone — injury rates are typically lower.

Which distance to start with

Your first race should be short enough to be fun.

• Sprint distance — 750 m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run. The right entry point for most people. Preparation time with some base fitness: around twelve weeks.
• Super sprint or novice distance — shorter depending on the organiser, often around 500 m, 20 km, 5 km. Good if swimming is your sticking point.
• Olympic distance — 1.5 km, 40 km, 10 km. Feasible as a first race if you come from one of the disciplines and already train regularly.

Choosing a middle or long distance as your first race is possible and rarely a good idea. You would be missing the experience that short races teach cheaply: transitions, fuelling, pacing, starting in a pack.

What you should manage before you enter

An honest stocktake saves frustration later:

• Swimming: 400 metres without stopping, at any pace. This is the most common real hurdle.
• Cycling: one hour continuously on a working bike.
• Running: 30 minutes continuously; slow is entirely fine.

Missing one of those is not a disqualifier, it is your first training priority.

A realistic training week

Three to five sessions are plenty for a first sprint. A proven pattern with four:

• Swim twice. Less brings almost nothing technically, and swimming is the most technical of the three.
• Bike once, and make it the longest session of the week.
• Run once or twice, one of those as a brick session straight off the bike.

The brick is the one session you cannot substitute: 15 to 20 minutes of running immediately after cycling. Your legs feel foreign — and that is exactly the sensation you want to know in advance rather than meet for the first time on race day.

More important than any detail is consistency. Four sessions every week for three months beat eight sessions in good weeks and none in bad ones.

Equipment: what you actually need

Triathlon has a reputation for being expensive, and that only becomes true at a level which does not concern you in year one.

What you need is little: a roadworthy bike — a road bike is nice, a well-maintained mountain or gravel bike also works —, a helmet that fits, running shoes that fit you, swimwear and goggles. Open-water races in colder water add a wetsuit; you can rent one for your first races.

What you do not need in year one: a time trial bike, a power meter, aero wheels, carbon racing shoes. They will make you measurably faster, but considerably less so than three months of consistent training.

One sensible exception: elastic laces for your running shoes. They cost little and save time and fumbling in transition.

The transition

Transition is the fourth discipline, and the only one where you gain time without fitness. Two rules are enough to start:

• Lay everything out the way you will need it, in the order you will need it. Rehearsing once at home is enough.
• Practise the transition once beforehand. Not for the seconds, but so that nothing on race day requires thinking about.

The most common mistakes

• Swimming too fast at the start. The pack, cold water and adrenaline push the pace up. Take the first 200 metres too hard and you pay for it across the whole race.
• Every session at moderate pace. Too fast for base, too slow for a stimulus. Easy should genuinely feel easy.
• Not drinking on the bike. Survivable at sprint distance, no longer so from Olympic distance up.
• Anything new on race day. Shoes, gels and breakfast do not belong in a race for the first time.

Further reading

• Building a triathlon training plan
• Setting your training zones
• Swim, bike, run: how much of each