Fastest Ways to Improve as a Beginner Triathlete

Get Fast Podcast, Ep 240, with Gerard and Jordan Donnelly

Get the basics right and then stay consistent. There are hundreds of things you could do or buy to improve as a triathlete, but a new athlete improves fastest by getting the essential equipment, learning a few key skills, setting up their devices properly, practising fuelling, and training consistently for months before worrying about the advanced details.

Gerard's first message is to not let the setup make you anxious. Every new athlete finds it overwhelming. If your watch stops working one day, you can still run by feel. The most important thing is that you're training.

What equipment do you need for each sport?

Swimming

• Bathers and goggles
• A basic watch, or the pool clock if you don't have one
• Pool access, and open water whenever you can find it
• Fins and a snorkel, which let you do a lot of useful drills

Cycling

• A bike. For most age groupers staying in the sport, a time trial bike is faster than a road bike in non-drafting races, but a road bike with clip-on bars is fine.
• An indoor trainer. A basic one will do. Many of the best sessions are easier to control indoors, and you need an option when the weather is bad.
• A bike computer to read your data
• A power meter. Plenty of people say beginners don't need one. Gerard and Jordan disagree, because it's the easiest way to measure whether you're improving.
• Shoes with cleats, padded shorts, a top and a helmet. Your bike shop should help with these.

Running

• Shoes, a running watch and your normal gear

All three: a heart rate monitor. Jordan says watch heart rate isn't enough, and there are triathlon straps you can wear in the water.

Which bike skills should you learn straight away?

• Clipping in and out with cleats
• Taking the wheels off and putting them back on, including the rear wheel. Shift onto the smallest cog first, so the chain is away from the spokes, and the wheel drops out much more easily.
• Changing tyres and tubes, and pumping tyres up
• Putting the bike on and off the trainer

If you can't take the rear wheel out, a puncture in a race could end your day. Ask the bike shop to show you, and film it on your phone. Gerard says that after doing it 10 times you'll laugh at how easy it is.

How should you start training?

First work out your goal: finishing comfortably, beating some mates, or racing for the podium. Then work out where you are now. Your training fills the gap between the two.

The order of priority is frequency, then volume, then intensity. Train often, at low volume and low intensity if that's your level, and add more only once you're adapting. Motivated beginners often want to do more, and Jordan says they often have to hold people back. What they want to see is how consistent you can be over your first three, four or six months.

Gerard puts it simply: consistency is king.

How should you set up your watch and bike computer?

Learn to start and stop it, use the lap button, and set up data screens that show what your sessions ask for, such as current, average and lap pace, heart rate, and current, average and lap power. Gerard compares it to building flat-pack furniture: you'll do better following the instructions step by step.

• Turn off auto-lap when it doesn't suit the session. A bike computer set to lap every 5km makes a set of 30-second efforts impossible to read.
• Link your devices and apps to each other.
• Calibrate your power meter every session.
• Train on the bike you'll race on, in the position you'll race in, using the bike's power meter instead of the trainer's. Sitting up on a road bike indoors won't prepare you for a time trial position on race day.
• Choose a route that suits the session.

When should you start practising nutrition?

As early as possible. You need to eat and drink enough for training, racing and recovery, and train your gut for race intensity. Gerard has seen very fit athletes fail to finish an Ironman because their gut stopped them.

If you're new to riding, start by taking one hand off the bars for five or 10 seconds at a time, then build up to reaching for a bottle. You don't need to know how many grams of carbohydrate you need per hour yet. That comes later.

What technique matters most for a beginner?

Swimming: technique comes ahead of speed. Jordan suggests spending almost half your time on technique. If holding the target pace means falling back into your old stroke, swim slower and keep the form.

Cycling: keep your cadence between about 80 and 100, and change gear before it drops on a climb. Free rides on hilly courses in apps like Zwift let you practise shifting indoors. Pedal for almost all of every ride, because the habit of freewheeling won't serve you on race day. Learn basic cornering too: if you're turning left, keep your left pedal up.

What can wait until later?

Aero helmets, disc wheels and other upgrades all give free speed, and if they're in your budget, go for it. They just aren't the priority. Choose a good bike to start with, then train on it.

The same goes for advanced questions about training structure, intensity distribution and efficiency. They're good questions, and they'll mean more once you have a solid base. Jordan says six months of consistent, uninterrupted, relatively simple training will do more for you than anything else.

Related

• How we coach triathletes
• Coaching questions, answered
• Real athlete results
• Apply for coaching