Saving time in transition can help your race in many ways. If you have a poor swim and you transition quickly, you will feel better and get your motivation rolling again. If you have a good swim and a good transition, you just keep that "I'm having a good race" flow going.

Newbie triathletes generally regard the transition area as a place to rest and regroup - a place to celebrate the completion of one leg of the race and prepare for the next. Sometimes, it feels like the gravity in transition areas is ten times normal with food, drink, sunscreen and friendly volunteers happy to chat.

Coach Brendon writes: If you have a look through race results you can often see that the difference between final placings is the transitions. Even at the elite level there can be as much as 10 seconds between a good transition and a poor one. Let's take a closer look at the two transitions in triathlon. BASIC PRINCIPLES

Jamie Cleveland writes: People spend hours in the pool and log thousands of miles on the road trying to get faster but often overlook the easiest way to take time off - transitions. Shaving a minute off your T1 time in an Olympic distance race, is the equivalent of going from 1:35/100m to 1:30/100m without any extra effort! Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of that?