Another brick in the wall

Well that was a great morning of working with bricks.

We get quite a broad cross section of athletes coming to these sessions, ranging from fast and keen young men to shy and uncertain older ladies and everything in between. One of the measures of success that I have for this session is whether, by the end of it, all the various athletes can transition quickly and efficiently. Confidently mounting and dismounting their bikes with the shoes still attached, quickly transitioning to their running shoes and then heading out for the run leg.

The amount of work necessary to achieve the above skills varies depending on the group, but I am pleased to say that for all of the transition practice sessions we have run, including today, we have achieved that measure of success.
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Mounting and dismounting a bike while the shoes are clipped to the pedals is actually quite a simple process, but lots of people find it very daunting. So daunting that many of them simply don't bother trying to learn. However, by giving up on the skill they are gifting several minutes to anyone who has mastered it. Valuable time that they won't get back, so it is a worthwhile skill to learn. As I say always say to people, if somebody offered to take 3 minutes of your run time with no change to your training or required effort, would you do it? Of course you would. That is the time that a good transition will save somebody, and all they have to do is be willing to learn the skills, and then practice them. A bit of a no brainer to me.

The key, I have found, for teaching transition skills is to slow it down. Slowing it down takes the pressure of the transition away. Once people are doing the transition slower they then have time to think through the steps, which helps people understand just how simple the process is, which in turn helps them execute the transition well. For complete novices it still usually takes a few tries, but typically by the end of the session, everybody is able to mount and dismount their bike successfully. Which was exactly the case today.

I have to say, watching people try a new skill, staring off uncertain but tackling their fear about it head on and coming out the other side successful does tend to give you a bout of the coaching warm and fuzzies.  \

A very satisfying morning indeed.