Do's and don'ts · May 10, 2025 · 2 min read
Race week is a logistics problem
The week around a long-course race is a bike box, a spreadsheet, and a lot of standing in lines.
The week around a long-course race is the part nobody puts on the highlight reel. The reel is the swim start and the finish chute, and the week is a bike box, a spreadsheet, and a lot of standing in lines. We've done this for Honu on the Big Island and for a full in Texas, and the lessons were the same both times, with Texas being the Honu problems multiplied by a longer flight.
The bike is a passenger
If your race isn't on your island, the bike flies, which means a box, taking it apart, putting it back together, a test ride, and the specific anxiety of a rear derailleur that's been through a cargo hold. We pack it the day before we leave and not the night before, because the first time you pack a bike takes an afternoon and the second time takes an hour, and race week isn't the week to be on your first time. Build it the day you land, ride it the next morning, and find the problems while there's still a mechanic on site.
The food comes with you
We eat what we've already suffered with, and that rule doesn't stop at the airport. The bars, the drink mix, and the breakfast all go in the suitcase. The expo will have things, some of them will be great, and race week is not the week to find out which ones.
The couple part
If one of you is racing and the other is supporting, race week is when that job gets real: who has the bag, who has the phone, where the support person is going to be at mile 60 and mile 90, and whether the racer wants to see them there or wants to be left alone. We work all of that out at home, before the flight, because the version of us that's been up since 3:30 a.m. is not a good negotiator. If you're both racing, everything above is doubled and the whose day is it rule is suspended, because it's both your days and the logistics have to be built for two.
The week is the race
The finish usually gets decided before the gun by the boring stuff: sleep, food, bike, timeline. Get those right and the race is just the race. Get them wrong and the first hour goes to fixing race week, which is what the bike box packed a day early, the suitcase full of bars, and the timeline written backward from the start are all there to prevent.