I am slow to get race recap posts done these days! Just about three weeks ago I headed up to Michigan to race the Michigan Titanium 70.3 on 8/13. I had been iffy about doing another 70.3 after Des Moines as there weren’t very many 70.3’s within driving distance in early/mid August, and the ones there were, were mostly flat. I was trying to find a course semi-similar to Kona as a good prep for the race and add in a good hard training day. I knew trying to simulate the heat would be a gamble but I at least wanted to pick a bike course that was hilly and hopefully a run course that was too. Obviously an ocean swim was out 🙂 but any OWS would be helpful, since I have only been training in a pool due to not many local OWS. So, after crunching the numbers, having a hilly bike and slightly-hilly run, Michigan Titanium looked like the best choice for me!

I drove up Friday morning since the trip was 8ish hours and I didn’t want to drive at night, and arrived around 5p (traffic through Chicago/Indiana…uggggh, rough). My hotel was in a nice little shopping area with lots of restaurants, so I picked up Chipotle for dinner and settled in for the night. Saturday I was up early, ate my big carb-loaded breakfast and after hanging out in the room for a bit for it to digest, I went to the practice swim at 10:30a. The water was on the edge of not being wetsuit legal, so I just wore a swim suit and boy was the water nice! Not only was the temperature nice, but it was a nice lake, not gross or murky! I managed to swim a little over 1k (practice swims still freak me out, I don’t feel like there are enough people in the water to scare away the lake creatures) and felt really good. Then I headed back to the hotel to shower and head downtown to where the packet pickup was.

Packet pickup was well organized and I was in and out in a jiffy. I bought a souvenir water bottle but was good about not splurging on anything else. Then I grabbed lunch from Panera and headed back to the hotel to lay low and get my bike ready for drop off in a couple of hours. After drop off I was once again back at the hotel and was in for the rest of the day/night to stay off of my legs. I ate my pre-race dinner of eggs, rice and sweet potato (this combination has changed slightly over the years but I think this might be the winning combination for me, lol). Lights out at 9p and I hoped to get some sleep!

My alarm went off at 4:45a, as my plan was to leave the hotel by 5:45a to get to the parking area and on the shuttles to transition by 6a as my race started at 8a. Well, I hit snooze thinking I would sleep a few more minutes, and I hardly ever fall back asleep race morning… but I did and the next thing I knew my phone showed it was 5:30a. Whoops! I tried to not panic as my original time to leave was still pretty early, ate my breakfast, got ready, hit the bathroom (my stomach was panicking though and it wasn’t in good shape), and then made a game day decision to take pepto bismol due to the state of my stomach. I still felt fairly calm, knowing this was a smaller race had really helped my nerves throughout the weekend, and just overall feeling less pressure to not be racing such a huge event like an Ironman 70.3 (I love those events too, but my pre-race nerves do not).

I was out of the hotel a little after 6 and made it to the shuttles by 6:15, not too bad! I was in transition by 6:30 and had plenty of time, I was even able to share my pump with a few others as I wasn’t needing to rush around. I also didn’t have to waste time in the porta potty line as after my upset stomach earlier, I felt pretty confident there wasn’t anything left in it. Soon I headed out of transition and waited by the swim start while getting (wrestling with) my wetsuit on. Easy peasy… I have never felt this chill before a race and it was AMAZING. I wanted to do well, but also, this wasn’t my A race so that just took the pressure off. It was going to be a long training day with some intensity, that was all 🙂

Soon the pre-race meeting started at 6:45, where we listened to last minute instructions and then lined up near our predicted swim time. The next thing I knew the horn went off and we were slowly, in groups of 3, entering the water. I was so chill I didn’t realize when it was my turn to head into the water that I didn’t even have my goggles pulled down, oops! After getting in the water, I had to stand up to readjust them, and then I was really off!

MiTi 70.3 – The Race