With the last triathlon I did, I am once again a nationally ranked triathlete! This race happened last weekend, The Experience @ Frankenmuth. This is my third time doing this race and second time I’ve done the sprint. Only gripe I have about this race is the switch to a time trial start, with sprint athlete’s being the last ones in the water…

Friday night I had the car loaded and my transition bag packed. The weather forecast was showing a beautiful sunny day and I figured sunblock would be a good idea. After having my numbers smeared off by my wetsuit from putting sunblock on after body marking at Caseville, I did a little investigating to see how to overcome this. One recommendation was to take a shower the night before, dry off and apply sunblock. The idea is that by morning the sunblock will have absorbed sufficiently into the skin. I can say this absolutely works (numbers are still visible after several showers and no sunburn!). If I had planned to be in the sun longer, I would have also applied a second coat of sunblock before leaving the house.

Saturday morning I was up around 6:00 AM. I grabbed my bottles out of the fridge, tossed my bag in the explorer and headed off to Frankenmuth around 6:30 AM. On the way I had a Clif bar for breakfast and sipped on a bottle of water. There was plenty of parking when I got there (it was a little crazy getting out). After getting body marked, I went over to set up transition.

The transition mat I got for father’s day is pretty awesome, it makes finding my spot that much easier. Once transition was set, I went back to the car to finish off the rest of my water and have a couple fig newton’s. I heard transition was closing, so I locked up the car and checked to make sure no one had disrupted my setup. Everything checked out and I proceeded down to the water around 7:30 AM.

Everyone got to watch the pro/elite wave start, followed by the challenged athletes and eventually the Olympic and sprint athletes. I don’t think I was in the water until at least 8:30 AM. I know I needed to drink the water beforehand, but with the seemingly endless porta potty lines, I was starting to doubt that decision. When I finally got in the water, I knew I was either going to have to pee or have a very VERY long and painful race.

Trying to pee while swimming is not an easy feat, I had never had to pee so bad and not be able to go as I was on this swim. Just before the turn around point I was finally able to let my legs sort of drag behind me and every time I put my head down, I was able to squirt a little out. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I was able to drain my bladder.

Once around the turn buoy, it was game on. I gave it all I had to turn in a decent swim time, once I got closer to the covered bridge, I started to slow down to get my heart rate under control. I quickly climbed the ladder and started to jog up the ramp and over to transition; I must have passed at least four or five people during this lengthy T1 run!

No problem with the wetsuit during this race (didn’t have it on ;))… I was in my bike gear quickly and ready to roll. My plan for the bike was to push pretty hard seeing as how the course was pancake flat. Once on the main road out of town, I dropped the hammer and was surprised to see my Garmin reading 21-22+ mph! I kept the pace up as best I could until I reached the turn around point.

I figured I was getting a nice tailwind on the way out and confirmed this when I turned around and could barely push 16 mph. Even though it wasn’t my fastest bike split, I still turned in a decent time. Not sure what my official T2 time was, the results didn’t include it, but my Garmin put me somewhere around 52 seconds.

The plan for the run was to start off with an eleven minute mile and see if I could push the pace for the last two. Well, I was trying to slow down, but was sitting around a ten minute mile and felt pretty good. Although my watch had me at better than a ten minute per mile pace, my official pace was 10:11 (I think the course was slightly long). Either way I had a good run for me! The best part was coming around a corner to see Susan with the boys. 🙂 Henry had even made a sign!

I crossed the finish line almost two minutes under my goal and slightly faster than when I did the sprint two years ago. It was a great race and one I look forward to every year!