Transition Times at the Square Lake Triathlon

As I was looking deeper through the results from the Square Lake Triathlon last month, I saw something interesting. They listed the “top 10 first transition times” and the “top 10 second transition times” which isn’t all that unique. BUT then below that, they listed the “top 50 total transition times.”

It was interesting to look through those lists. Only ONE PERSON (who was the overall winner) was in both “top 10s,” ranking 2nd in T1 and 9th in T2. And those 2 splits gave him the fastest “total” transition time by 9 seconds.

I had a crappy and slow first transition as I wrestled my way into a long sleeve shirt while soaking wet as I noted in my race report, but then I had a faster T2 coming in as 7th overall there. After NOT making the top 10 in T1 and being 7th in T2, I was ranked 5th OVERALL in combined transition times:

There’s a lesson in there somewhere... but I’m not totally sure what that lesson is. Maybe it’s that you need to be consistently good through BOTH transitions to have a successful race, but that’s not totally true as my first transition sucked. Maybe it’s that most people are NOT consistently good through both transitions, so my poor T1 wasn’t AS poor as other people’s really unequal transitions. It’s also worth noting that everyone in the 2 “top 10” lists ended up 1st or 2nd in their age groups (with 16 of the 20 listed being 1st overall in their age group).

Here was my Square Lake Triathlon race report from last month - my only multisport race of 2022.