Set your race sport to Triathlon when creating your race to activate Triathlon features.
Start Waves
Start waves are sometimes called heats. Waves split your start categories into smaller start groups defined by a maximum number of racers per wave.
When creating your race, select the wave start option under Setup Template. Once your race is created, head to the start list tab on the race page and select the Split Racers into Start Groups option. A box should appear saying to split start. Once that is ticked, a bunch of new options will appear.
The first step is to separate your categories. You can group your racers into categories with the Fields to Group By dropdown. These fields will split your racers in the same manner as normal start group setup. For example you can split by category, by gender, both, or any other combination of racer fields.
When you add one or more fields, you will see a preview of your categories. In this case we have grouped by gender.
Racers in different categories as defined here will never be put in the same wave. In this example, anyone who is male will always be in waves consisting only of male racers.
The next step is to identify the Maximum number of racers per wave in your race. If your triathlon starts in a pool, generally speaking this number will be the number of lanes in your pool multiplied by the number of racers allowed per lane in a given wave.
By default, the system will fill waves to the maximum size until they run out of racers to fill with. If you want similarly sized waves there is an option to check that box. An example of this option is if you have 18 racers in a given category and you set Maximum number of racers per wave to 10, the system will create two waves with 9 racers each. If you uncheck this option, the system will attempt to fill all waves, and place any left overs in the last wave. In this case the system would fill one wave of 10, and a second wave of 8.
The above are all that is necessary to set up wave start groups. The following options allow finer control, but do not need to be set.
Fields to Order waves by allows some control over how racers are placed into waves. Fields added here are used to sort racers within a category before the system adds them to waves. This is useful for less strict grouping than separate categories above. With these categories the system maintains separate where possible, but prioritises fuller waves over separation.
For example, if you want to keep males and females generally separate but can allow a mixed wave to keep waves fuller, add Gender here in the Select a Field to Order Racers by dropdown. This will generally produce all waves of a single gender except for one mixed. This works for any field, but fields with more than two options may produce more than one mixed wave.
Remember that Fields to Order waves by tries to avoid mixing within waves, but will prioritize filling waves over separation. If you absolutely cannot have racers with different values for a given field in the same wave, you should add those above in Fields to Group by instead.
Finally you can click Create the Start List to generate your waves.
Assign Lanes
You can use this tool to assign lane numbers to racers in your waves. This is most useful for pool start triathlons.
Scroll down to Assign Racer Numbers and click on the 3 dot menu near the bottom. Click on Assign Start Lanes
By default, Lane Number Field is set to Store in a new field. Change this if you already have a number field on your racers in which you would like to store lane numbers.
Enter the Number of Lanes in your pool start, and click Assign Lanes Numbers.
You can erase all lane numbers on racers by clicking Clear All Lanes.
Click Done, X, or anywhere outside the Assign Lanes box to close it.
It is usually helpful to have lane numbers and wave number displayed on the start list, either for reference or more commonly for printing.
To do this, click on Edit Group next to your specific waves. Inside the expanded box, you can select whatever you’d like from the Fields to Display drop down menu, and then it will display on your start list when viewing or printing. You can do this for specific waves or it will give you option to do this for all wave groups.
Lanes are assigned sequentially, in the seeding order of the start group. In the example below, Number of Lanes is 3. If you want to change the order in which lanes are assigned, you must change the seeding for the start group, and then re-assign bibs, and finally re-assign lanes.
