Question:Have the anti-draftites ever considered a lobby to rid the triathlon
of counting the transition time?
Surely this must be the only sport in the world that counts changing
clothes and equipment as part of the performance time. The Decathlon
does not launch a sprint from the pole vault pit.
Just asking?
Answer:
Well, yeah, triathlon's the only sport in the world that counts
"changing clothes and equipment" in the race time, if you discount:
- Any type of track relay race (certainly passing the baton is
changing equipment, even if you discount the completely new "engine"
used for every leg)
- Most types of "adventure racing" (switching from the mountain bike
to the kayak, only 18 hours to go...)
- Pretty much every widely-accepted form of vehicular racing (auto,
motorcycle, etc -- or should we stop counting pit-stop times in F1?)
I think the key here is the "race" aspect. The gun goes off, the
clock starts; the clock keeps going until you cross the finish line.
The pole vault isn't timed.
The problem with your proposed approach is that Triathlon is supposed to be
an endurance event.
If you discount the transition times, what's to stop me from strolling into
T2, sitting down to drop my heart rate, get a drink, stretch my muscles, get
a massage, take a piss, kiss my wife and kids, read the morning paper, and
having a bite to eat before heading out for the run leg?
Maybe that's OK with you, but it certainly changes the fundamental nature of
the event.
I suppose the closest thing would be pit stops in auto racing. A tire
change is a change of equipment. The clock keeps running and time in
the pits effects the overall speed average of the race for each car.
Frankly I love the transitions. It was one of the things that
hooked me on tri's. Something about the complete and utter organized
chaos mixed with the partial high of oxygen deprevation and fatigue
all while trying to think rationally. The time in the "pits" is the
most exciting part of the event in IMO. Without it the race would be
turned into a swim followed by a bike ride followed by a run, not a
triathlon.
Why not go to NASCAR and ask them to remove pit times from
their races. Total time on track wins. Basically that's the same thing
that you are advocating.
Here's the problem - if I have no time while in the transitions, I'm
going to rest up in there as long as I can at absolutely no cost.
Besides, timed transitions make for great strategy. Do I take the time
to change out of these clothes, do I cut a few corners and try to save
some time, do I take a bit longer and hope to make it up on the next
leg?
It's much the same as auto racing. It's the time and decisions in the
pits that can make or break the race.
Like the guy who coasts across the finish line first with no gas. . . .
or doesn't quite make it. They're decisions made under pressure, and a
big part of the mental aspect of sport (not that I consider car racing a
sport, mind you, but this scenario always fascinated me).
They could, of course, allot everyone a fixed time for each transition
and make sure everyone used it all, but it would take a lot away from
the sport, I think.
Me, I'm not going to win any awards, so I'll take the time to put on
socks or even chance into running shorts after the bike for a long race.
I'd rather be comfortable. But those pros swimming with their cycling
shoes on really inspire me!
What? Is that legal? Seems entirely not right to me. Although
I can see the advantage in transition time I can also see a whole lot
of areas to cheat on the swim. I.E. Wearing larger shoes, specially
designed ones etc.
A Decathlon is a series of 10 different events, held over multiple
days; you earn points for each of the events, and then sum them at the
end to determine the winner.
A Triathlon is a set of 3 events held consecutively on a single day,
where you are determined to be the winner if you have the fastest time
from the start of the 1st event until the finish of the 3rd. And the
same definition holds whether you're participating in a bike
draft-legal or bike draft-illegal format.
What would be the purpose of eliminating the transition time?
We actually stage our club champs in this format, and because I'm a faster
TT'r but a slower swimmer, come the run I normally have a 2 minute gap on
people who beat me in a normal Tri, so I then run the run with them. Which
enables me to beat people who put 2 or more minutes into me in a sprint
distance Tri.
Because of the time between the swim end and the TT start, I have
sufficiently recovered to put minutes into them on the bike.
Agreed, depending on the distances, you will get different results.
Remember that there isn't one agreed upon distance for a tri - even in
the sprints they vary greatly. Personally, I pick and choose my main
races. I am very strong in swim\bike, and relatively weak in the run,
so I try to find a race with a long swim and short run.
Further, there may be another factor differentiating success in a
short race vs an IM distance - training and fitness level. One can be
very successful in a sprint with a lot less training that it would
take to do well in an IM. Let's face it - most of us work for a
living, and have a hard time training 15-20 hrs a week (what we'd
likely need if we wanted to do OK in an IM). This likely will have a
greater effect than fast twitch\slow twitch...
However, I fail to see how not counting the transition times would
matter with race distances, or make a tri more interesting or
competitive. I know many who consider transitions the "fourth leg",
especially in the shorter distances. As it is now, while there are
three legs, they make up one complete race, and the transitions add a
great deal of strategy to it. Without them, you really have three
distinct races that would have one overall time. BORING!
There's another point people are missing: normally events like the
decathlon assign points to performances, presumably to weight the events
roughly equally. Total time doesn't make sense in the decathlon, since
there are no "times" for the weight and jumping events. But even if it
did, why would you add the times for, say, the 100m and 1500m runs? It
would effectively negate the 100M run: a 1-second victory in the 100m is
HUGE, but the person winning the 1500m would likely win it by more than
one second.
If you don't want to switch to a weighting or points system (or weight
the distances so the times are comparable), doing a triathlon in stages
with rest between events makes little sense.
(BTW, the points system also potentially allows someone to compete and
get a final score while missing an event or getting DQed; in practice,
this takes you out of contention for medals, although in principle you
could still win if you, say, no-heighted the pole vault).
I did once see an ad for a winter indoor triathlon that gives everyone
5 or 10 minutes for each transition. Anything over the limit was
included in the total race time, but there was no bonus for completing
the transition faster then the time limit. The downside of such a
race format is that you don't really know where you stand in rank once
the swim is over. It is very possible that you could finish before
someone else (because you did a quicker transition), but still be
beaten by him/her (because he/she did the swim, bike, and run faster,
but used up all or nearly all of the allowed transition time). But
that, like reverse order triathlons, is an uncommon race format.
In the biathlon, they don't count transition time toward your
total time, or in duathlon either.
In NASCAR racing, pit stops don't count against you either. You can get
out of the car, take a bath, whatever, and finish the race when you feel
like it.
Also, in track, they don't count the time it takes to exchange the baton
against you. They just have 4 people run against the clock and then
total up the times.
Oh, wait, maybe that isn't right after all.
Think about it: in other racing sports, if you WANT to change clothes
and equipment, the clock doesn't stop for you. You don't HAVE to take
any time for transitions in triathlon: swim without a wetsuit, then bike
and run barefoot.
This forum is a gateway to the rec.sport.triathlon internet website. Any posts you make in this forum will be propogated to internet.
I think definitely transitions should be counted, and in pro mass start
races, MUST be counted so that the first person to cross the finish line is
indeed the winner. Imagine battling to catch someone the last 200 meters,
only to find they change shoes slower than you, so you lose.
It's also a great excuse to get some rest between events, which is a big
advantage in shorter events. I know someone who got lost on the bike course
and came in 15 minutes late, so he didn't care about his time and stood
around talking with staff for about five minutes, then went out and of
course set his PR for a 5K, probably ANY 5K. There would still be a limit,
and everyone would just stand around and stretch until they reached that
limit.
