Have you seen those videos of dogs being held over water? They doggie paddle even though they’re not in the water. I get such a kick out of this. 

I can relate. After being on a bike for three hours, legs will not do anything except turn over and over in a circular motion. Take the girl off the bike and she’s just like the air swimming canine. Except a ground peddling human.

This is part of what you train for in triathlon — the ability to transition your legs from the circular revolutions of the bike to the footfalls of running strides. 

In my experience the transition always feels awkward, but you can train yourself to expect the clunkiness of the first mile of the run. As I unclip my feet from the bike pedals and set out on a run, I expect that I’ll feel (and perhaps look) like a robot that’s just been programmed with the ability to walk. 

Here’s the thing — well, two things actually:

First, you can’t change the awkwardness of the transition. All you can do is work with it and, ideally, keep a sense of humor about it. 

Second, the feeling of awkwardness has exactly nothing to do with results. I typically won’t look at my watch for the first couple miles of running off the bike. I feel like garbage, my legs are already smoked, and therefore I must be running like garbage. The interesting thing is that sometimes I’m not. How it’s going and how it’s feeling are two completely different things.

At the peak of training for my last race, I did a series of 50+ mile bike rides followed by 5 mile runs. The wild part is that the pace on these runs was significantly faster than my average pace during much shorter workouts. The runs felt laughably bad though, so when I finally looked at my watch a few miles in and saw a snappy pace I was dumbfounded.

Bottom line: You may feel like you’re doing a terrible job. Doesn’t mean you actually are. Keep running.