Friday #TriathlonTip – Counting Laps

Last Sunday 2 Feb 2025, I competed, in the standard distance at the Island Triathlon in Stockton near Newcastle NSW.

Overall not a bad race and I enjoyed my race day, I was cooked at the end but that’s all good. Some might say why not simply count to 8? Well the truth is that in the fog of battle counting is one of the things that really becomes very difficult!
However there was one challenge the 40km ride consisted of 8 laps, which raises the question “How to keep count?”.

After some googling here are some of the suggestions I found that seem to make sense:

• Use hair ties (scrunchies?) and put 8 on one arm and move them to the other as you do your laps
• Same idea but use bits of tape on your handle bar and discard one for every lap, this is littering however
• You could do above and move them left to right, but on a triathlon deck there’s not a lot of space really
• Use jelly babies and eat one each lap, no littering plus a little reward for each lap!
• Use your Garmin / watch and divide total distance by laps and you’ll at least know when you’ve completed all laps, in this case if your Garmin shows around 40km when approaching the finish/lap sign you know you’re done

I choose the jelly bean method and placed the in a mini bum bag, which allowed me to keep it open while riding. I didn’t use jelly beans but the soft variety, which meant they did get a bit sticky as I did my laps but it certainly worked. I had the last one after lap 5 after, which it’s easy to start counting down.