Latest / Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes / XTERRA World Championship Italy: Race Recap & Lessons Learned
Transcript
- 0:37Coach Carlie: Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast.
- 0:40Coach Carlie: I am your host, Coach Chris Newport, and this is a long overdue podcast.
- 0:46Coach Carlie: This is all about my experience at the Xterra World Championship in Italy in September of 2025.
- 0:54Coach Carlie: And I've been putting this off long enough.
- 0:56Coach Carlie: So finally put together a fun little slideshow of some pictures, even though this is not all of them.
- 1:03Coach Carlie: There are way more of them, but I at least figured let's get this out to you guys so that you guys can not only learn from my experiences, hear what it was like to race in a world championship and to travel to a world championship and listen to all the lessons that I learned.
- 1:19Coach Carlie: And oh boy, were there a lot of them.
- 1:22Coach Carlie: And then perhaps kind of what's next for me.
- 1:25Coach Carlie: So if you're watching this on YouTube, like I said, I've got some pictures, but I'll kind of back up a little bit.
- 1:32Coach Carlie: So I was lucky enough to qualify for the World Championship in September for Xterra through the USA National Championship, which was in Alabama.
- 1:42Coach Carlie: Great course, super fun race.
- 1:45Coach Carlie: Ended up actually placing second in my age group behind a woman from Argentina.
- 1:51Coach Carlie: However, because she is not from the US, I was and I ended up being crowned the USA National Championship because, in order to do that, you have to be from the country of origin for whatever the world championship is.
- 2:07Coach Carlie: So I got this cool jersey and felt really lucky to be able to get a spot to the world championships.
- 2:15Coach Carlie: So the worlds had three years in Trentino, Italy, which if you have not been, I highly, highly, highly recommend this area of the world.
- 2:27Coach Carlie: It is fantastically beautiful.
- 2:29Coach Carlie: If you are looking at the pictures right now, I mean, the mountains are pristine.
- 2:34Coach Carlie: It's the dolomites.
- 2:35Coach Carlie: I mean, you just you can't get better scenery than this.
- 2:39Coach Carlie: It almost looked like AI or like a cartoon or something.
- 2:43Coach Carlie: It is just wonderfully beautiful.
- 2:46Coach Carlie: So highly recommend that.
- 2:48Coach Carlie: There's great biking there.
- 2:49Coach Carlie: There's amazing trails.
- 2:52Coach Carlie: And oh boy, it is quite the challenge.
- 2:54Coach Carlie: Beautiful water and just a fun place to be in general.
- 2:58Coach Carlie: And delicious food, might I add, of course.
- 3:02Coach Carlie: So let's back up a little bit and get into the course, because this was, of course, part of my personal challenge that you will hear about.
- 3:14Coach Carlie: So I'm showing the swim course first.
- 3:17Coach Carlie: So it is an Olympic distance race, which means it's going to be as close to the format of what they would be doing at the Olympics.
- 3:24Coach Carlie: But obviously, with Xtera, it is swim, mountain bike, and trail run rather than swim road bike and road run.
- 3:33Coach Carlie: Typically is how the Olympic distances are done.
- 3:37Coach Carlie: And with Xtera, there is not an issue with drafting like there is in USA style racing, but not in ITU style racing or Olympic distance racing, which comes into play because in Italy they use slightly different rules than I had been used to in the USA.
- 3:58Coach Carlie: So I will get to that here in a moment, but a little foreshadowing for you.
- 4:02Coach Carlie: But this is the swim course.
- 4:04Coach Carlie: So it goes in sort of this like W or M shape, depending on how you want to look at it.
- 4:09Coach Carlie: And they call it an Australian exit.
- 4:13Coach Carlie: So first and foremost, with the swim, and I even have it sitting here because I am a travel nerd.
- 4:21Coach Carlie: I love to write down what's the weather going to be each day, and that helps me to plan out what I'm going to bring.
- 4:27Coach Carlie: So I have this written out.
- 4:28Coach Carlie: We left, I believe, on a Tuesday, and the race was on Saturday.
- 4:32Coach Carlie: So when I wrote this out, right before I packed my clothing on Saturday, the high was supposed to be 60 degrees.
- 4:39Coach Carlie: And before we left, the water temperature was about 68, 70 degrees.
- 4:45Coach Carlie: So I brought my shorty wetsuit.
- 4:49Coach Carlie: I've been used to racing in that wetsuit for forever.
- 4:52Coach Carlie: I love that suit, super comfortable in it.
- 4:54Coach Carlie: Gets on and off super easy.
- 4:56Coach Carlie: I love it.
- 4:56Coach Carlie: So anyway, I brought that.
- 4:59Coach Carlie: More foreshadowing.
- 5:00Coach Carlie: But anyhow, you can see this Australian exit, this W-shaped course.
- 5:06Coach Carlie: Come race day.
- 5:09Coach Carlie: The temperature had dropped quite significantly.
- 5:13Coach Carlie: So this swim course uh it kicked my butt.
- 5:18Coach Carlie: And I've never had that experience ever in the 25 plus years that I've been doing Trafalon until this time.
- 5:27Coach Carlie: I had my first panic attack in the water.
- 5:30Coach Carlie: All of you new people who have been in the open water, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is really crazy.
- 5:35Coach Carlie: I had my first experience of that.
- 5:37Coach Carlie: So I can relate to how you feel because the water temperature dropped drastically just in those couple of days because they had really, really terrible weather.
- 5:50Coach Carlie: It was super overcast.
- 5:52Coach Carlie: It rained a ton.
- 5:53Coach Carlie: So the course was disgusting.
- 5:56Coach Carlie: But let's just say when I started the race, I was the only one in a shorty wetsuit.
- 6:02Coach Carlie: The only one.
- 6:03Coach Carlie: I had foreigners looking at me and whispering about like that lady has lost her mind.
- 6:10Coach Carlie: So I definitely underpacked.
- 6:13Coach Carlie: I didn't bring my sleeves.
- 6:15Coach Carlie: I don't necessarily think I needed a different cap, but I probably should have brought it.
- 6:20Coach Carlie: Honestly, I needed a full wetsuit.
- 6:22Coach Carlie: I needed sleeves and the whole nine yards.
- 6:25Coach Carlie: I didn't have it.
- 6:26Coach Carlie: That contributed to me not being able to warm up.
- 6:30Coach Carlie: So I didn't warm up prior to the race, which I always warm up if I can in the water.
- 6:36Coach Carlie: Um, and I wasn't able to do that because I knew that I was gonna get too cold just standing around because the air temperature was in the um low to mid-40s Fahrenheit and it was overcast.
- 6:53Coach Carlie: And um I was just basically relying on some push-ups and squats and to get me warm.
- 6:59Coach Carlie: But as soon as the gun went off and I hit that water, my panic button went off and I was not able to actually get my face in the water for probably uh two at least 200 meters.
- 7:15Coach Carlie: Once I got my face in the water, once I got moving, it was very cold, but I was feeling really good.
- 7:21Coach Carlie: But then when you exit and have to jump back in, that made me cold again.
- 7:27Coach Carlie: And I made the mistake of jumping in with my legs straight instead of more like a lifeguard style or diving in, which I hadn't practiced.
- 7:36Coach Carlie: That's on me.
- 7:38Coach Carlie: And yeah, that slowed me down too.
- 7:40Coach Carlie: And I uh while I found a rhythm at the end, I could never really get warm.
- 7:45Coach Carlie: So I was I was cold kind of like from the get-go.
- 7:48Coach Carlie: So, anyway, that was an interesting experience with the Australian exit.
- 7:51Coach Carlie: So, would I have done things differently?
- 7:53Coach Carlie: Absolutely, would have had way uh more of a wetsuit on.
- 7:56Coach Carlie: I would have um practiced those Australian exits a little bit more prior to actual race day.
- 8:03Coach Carlie: All right, so next up, the bike course.
- 8:07Coach Carlie: I wanted to highlight this section.
- 8:09Coach Carlie: It is a 32K bike course and it's split into two 16K loops.
- 8:14Coach Carlie: So it's roughly about 20 miles for all you folks who like the conversion.
- 8:18Coach Carlie: And climbing was more than 1100 meters across the entire course, which is multiply that by at least three in terms of feet.
- 8:29Coach Carlie: This particular section of the course, you have the first 2K super flat, and then you hit this climb.
- 8:34Coach Carlie: And I was lucky enough to be able to come and practice the um do the race course on Thursday.
- 8:39Coach Carlie: So I was able to get a feel for what it looked like.
- 8:41Coach Carlie: It was very muddy on Thursday, but it wasn't nearly to the degree that it was on race day.
- 8:47Coach Carlie: But if you can see this, there is a good majority of the 16K loop.
- 8:54Coach Carlie: So from two and 10 and a half or 11K, there is an average grade of 7% with a max grade of almost 20%.
- 9:03Coach Carlie: So that's an 8.5k climb.
- 9:06Coach Carlie: And then basically you just descend through this Paganella bike park, which has these like smooth berms.
- 9:13Coach Carlie: I'll show you some pictures here in a moment.
- 9:15Coach Carlie: Some like really fun switchbacks and some stone descents, as it says in the description.
- 9:20Coach Carlie: And then you wind through the city of Mulvana, which is bananas, uh, down some stairs.
- 9:27Coach Carlie: And it's a really cool experience.
- 9:29Coach Carlie: So, anyway, I show you this section because in my head it was two 16k loops with a total, and I was thinking of the total elevation gain across one loop, not across this section.
- 9:45Coach Carlie: So I would have changed my training to do more strength and power for shorter distances rather than being able to do, in essence, sort of half of what the expect expected distance was.
- 10:00Coach Carlie: So again, on me for not truly absorbing what the bike course was gonna look like.
- 10:05Coach Carlie: But holy smokes, you guys, this bike course was absolutely beautiful.
- 10:09Coach Carlie: All right, so on to the run course.
- 10:11Coach Carlie: From a training perspective, I didn't really do anything differently, but there is, um, it's just so fun, goes through the woods and through this like little walkway that goes along the water, and you can see this crystal clear, pristine water.
- 10:26Coach Carlie: It was just so amazing.
- 10:27Coach Carlie: Two 5k loops.
- 10:28Coach Carlie: Yes, there was some climbing there, and you can see this little section right at about one and a half K where you're cruising along at a transition, and then you literally like climb straight up.
- 10:40Coach Carlie: I think the average climb for that 800 meter section or so is like 23%, 28%, something like that.
- 10:49Coach Carlie: I mean, basically you're hiking up a hill.
- 10:51Coach Carlie: It's big, but fun.
- 10:53Coach Carlie: All right, so this is transition, and bo boy, do I have some stories about this?
- 10:58Coach Carlie: So you can see me coming in on race day for transition.
- 11:01Coach Carlie: You can see the little black boxes.
- 11:02Coach Carlie: So everybody got a black box that sounds like something that comes on an airplane.
- 11:07Coach Carlie: It's not, it's just a container.
- 11:09Coach Carlie: So this is what's different between USA Trofon and this ITU style of racing is that in that box, you have to put everything that you discard into that box as you use it.
- 11:25Coach Carlie: And I did not do that because I did not pay attention enough to the directions or the instructions.
- 11:32Coach Carlie: So, you guys, I literally did like everything wrong.
- 11:34Coach Carlie: Not everything, but oh boy, a lot.
- 11:37Coach Carlie: So you can see that all the boxes are turned upside down and they have a puddle of water on them because it rained so much the day before.
- 11:46Coach Carlie: I mean, just poured all day, well into the night.
- 11:50Coach Carlie: Everything was so wet.
- 11:51Coach Carlie: So, in order for everything to not pull up in those boxes, they in those little transition boxes, they put them upside down.
- 11:57Coach Carlie: And then as we got there, we could turn everything back upright and set out what we needed to set out.
- 12:04Coach Carlie: All right.
- 12:05Coach Carlie: And another fun rule is you can notice when I'm going into transition, I do not have my helmet on.
- 12:09Coach Carlie: And then once I make it into transition, I do have my helmet on.
- 12:12Coach Carlie: So even though I was not physically riding my bike, they require you to put your helmet on to walk your bike into transition.
- 12:18Coach Carlie: So, whatever, I will follow those rules, no problem.
- 12:22Coach Carlie: But what I didn't do right coming out of the water is that I discarded my wetsuit, as I have many, many times over all the years that I've raced in the US onto the ground.
- 12:34Coach Carlie: And that earned me a penalty.
- 12:37Coach Carlie: So, lucky me, and I'll talk about that later on in the run course.
- 12:42Coach Carlie: But that earned me an opportunity to hang out with a race official on the run course with which I had to stop and hang out in the penalty box because I did not follow directions.
- 12:55Coach Carlie: So, how about that?
- 12:57Coach Carlie: So, anyway, um, this next slide just shows how pristinely beautiful this place is.
- 13:03Coach Carlie: Again, like Mulvano, you guys need to go.
- 13:06Coach Carlie: It is fantastically beautiful.
- 13:08Coach Carlie: It looks like not real, it's just amazing.
- 13:12Coach Carlie: So, prior to the race, some of these get into professional photos, some of these get into the photos that my husband was taking with me.
- 13:18Coach Carlie: You can see on the left, this that shows the Australian exit.
- 13:23Coach Carlie: There's a dock that goes out, and they had lined it with blue carpet.
- 13:28Coach Carlie: So that's where the athletes would run out of the water and then get on the dock, run over the dock, and then dive or jump back into the water and continue going out from there.
- 13:38Coach Carlie: You can see their firefighters and their medics off to the side there, all in their red getups.
- 13:44Coach Carlie: And you can see what generally speaking, most humans are wearing because it's in the 40s.
- 13:50Coach Carlie: So some winter hats, some winter coats.
- 13:52Coach Carlie: And in fact, when we had gotten there, we did not have the appropriate attire, as I was mentioning, because it looked like the, and I'm looking at the weather, 65 degrees on Wednesday, 63 degrees on Thursday, 56.
- 14:07Coach Carlie: No, it was not that at all.
- 14:09Coach Carlie: The temperature dropped quite drastically, and we actually had to go buy hats, like a winter hat.
- 14:16Coach Carlie: And then you can see on the right here, this is all the women getting ready for the swim at the race start.
- 14:24Coach Carlie: And of course, they're all smiling beautifully.
- 14:26Coach Carlie: Why wouldn't they smile beautifully?
- 14:28Coach Carlie: In fact, I think that's me right there on the right, uh, the only one with bare skin showing.
- 14:34Coach Carlie: And um, this woman next to me, she's got her long sleeve suit on.
- 14:38Coach Carlie: She's got a neoprene cap under her hat, and me, not so much.
- 14:44Coach Carlie: I'm in my shorty, freezing my little patushi off.
- 14:48Coach Carlie: So as I was getting out, this next set of slides did, like I said, I got in the water, had a panic attack, like could not catch my breath, couldn't put my face in the water, just sort of, you know, doing this like ridiculous breaststroke, uh, doggy paddle kind of thing, just trying to calm myself down.
- 15:05Coach Carlie: Once I did finally get into a rhythm, felt great, and then had to get out.
- 15:10Coach Carlie: And putting my hands on my head, that probably is like an indicator that I was fixing my cap.
- 15:15Coach Carlie: But that was like, this is gonna be the way this race goes.
- 15:18Coach Carlie: As I got out, it just I just got cold because it was cold.
- 15:24Coach Carlie: And then getting back into transition.
- 15:26Coach Carlie: I had practiced transitions.
- 15:28Coach Carlie: I was gonna be all ready to put my shoes on and then buckle them more specifically once I got on the bike.
- 15:35Coach Carlie: I was gonna put my gloves on my bike and then put them on later on in the race.
- 15:41Coach Carlie: One ended up falling on the ground, and of course, you can see it in my hand there.
- 15:46Coach Carlie: And then I was like, I don't, I've got to put my gloves on, otherwise, I will be sliding all over the place.
- 15:51Coach Carlie: So, um, and then of course I did put my jacket on.
- 15:54Coach Carlie: That was a definite win on my part.
- 15:58Coach Carlie: I was thinking that as I was climbing up that god-awful long stretch of hill, thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so glad that I have my coat on.
- 16:06Coach Carlie: Um, and that said, all the pros, of course, did not have extra layers.
- 16:12Coach Carlie: We were able to watch them because they went off earlier.
- 16:15Coach Carlie: We were able to watch them on the big screen.
- 16:17Coach Carlie: So if you get a chance to look back at, I'll link to it, the Extero World Champs for the pros, the mobile cameras that were following them on their dirt bikes, were oftentimes losing reception and then just couldn't keep good traction.
- 16:36Coach Carlie: I mean, the pros were even getting off their bikes because it was so muddy.
- 16:39Coach Carlie: Anyway, this is me um getting on all of my apparel.
- 16:46Coach Carlie: There's my wetsuit that's sitting on the ground and shouldn't be.
- 16:49Coach Carlie: That again earned me a nice penalty.
- 16:52Coach Carlie: And then as I exited transition, you can see how muddy everything got.
- 16:57Coach Carlie: I mean, it was so disgusting.
- 16:59Coach Carlie: They so you would exit transition and they created a couple of man-made ramps.
- 17:08Coach Carlie: And you can see them in the picture here.
- 17:10Coach Carlie: It's not a little ramp, it's a big ramp.
- 17:14Coach Carlie: And they're neat.
- 17:15Coach Carlie: They're a lot of fun when it's not super muddy, but because so many people were slipping and going backwards, it just created this massive bottleneck.
- 17:24Coach Carlie: So I'm glad that Jay was able to capture this.
- 17:26Coach Carlie: So that was my opportunity.
- 17:28Coach Carlie: I stopped at the bottom of it and I actually put my gloves on and then I grabbed my bike and hike-a-biked up the ramp, holding on to the wooden railing.
- 17:38Coach Carlie: They had spectators and staff who were holding on to the structure so that it wouldn't fall over because there were so many people on it all at once trying to climb up.
- 17:51Coach Carlie: And they had like chicken wire on the ramp so that it's less likely to slip.
- 17:57Coach Carlie: It didn't matter because when you have all of this mud and all, you know, all over the entire ramp, it would just like a hot mess.
- 18:07Coach Carlie: So you can see people trying to like pull them up, like spectators and staff along the sides trying to like pull everybody up this ramp.
- 18:14Coach Carlie: So that was an interesting, unexpected obstacle.
- 18:17Coach Carlie: And then we had to do that twice.
- 18:19Coach Carlie: So super neat, but really hard when you have all these people who are basically bottlenecking into that space.
- 18:27Coach Carlie: And then as I'm switching over to the next sets of slides, you can see that I was able to get up over those man-made things.
- 18:34Coach Carlie: But then they had, you see, there's in the background, there's like a staff person who just had to stand there and basically like give you a shove because there was hardly any traction for people to get up these, even if you had some degree of momentum, but they were fun.
- 18:50Coach Carlie: This, the picture in the center.
- 18:52Coach Carlie: So after going through that entire bike course, it was just like it was so sloppy, it was so muddy.
- 18:58Coach Carlie: Um, the second loop was far worse than the first, but it was still disgusting.
- 19:02Coach Carlie: It took me to go um 20 miles.
- 19:05Coach Carlie: It took me almost four hours, I think right at four hours, something like that, which is insane.
- 19:10Coach Carlie: Um, and my dear mother was like, You spent so long on the bike course.
- 19:15Coach Carlie: I was like, Thank you for adding salt to my wounds.
- 19:19Coach Carlie: But this section coming into town, it was so cool to go down, like we went down this like set of stairs, and the pictures don't really do it justice of how disgusting it got.
- 19:30Coach Carlie: But apparently, um, so my husband stood there for a while and saw several wipeouts and several ambulance trips, unfortunately, for some athletes who had to be taken off the course.
- 19:41Coach Carlie: But I think this was my first time down.
- 19:43Coach Carlie: My bike still looks somewhat clean.
- 19:45Coach Carlie: And you can see on the next slide that I'm showing that the professional photos after the first loop and the professional photos after the second loop of the degree to which not only my bike but myself are just covered in mud.
- 20:05Coach Carlie: I mean, literal head to toe.
- 20:07Coach Carlie: I couldn't even use glasses.
- 20:09Coach Carlie: I knew that I really I prefer to ride in glasses, but I wasn't able to because I knew that they would just get disgusting, and then what the heck do I do with them?
- 20:18Coach Carlie: There were people dropping chains left, right, and center, especially going after like very muddy descents that people would either maybe they would ride them, maybe they would hike them down, and then they would just drop their chain.
- 20:30Coach Carlie: So uh luckily I only dropped my chain once, and that was pretty much the only technical issue that I had.
- 20:37Coach Carlie: But I mean, it was just pushing your bike, not only with you and your bike, but also all this added mud.
- 20:46Coach Carlie: It was just so much mud that I I can't even, I can't even give you enough appreciation of how disgusting it was.
- 20:56Coach Carlie: The only thing that we got away with is that it wasn't currently raining when we were racing.
- 21:00Coach Carlie: Thank goodness.
- 21:01Coach Carlie: But we destroyed that park.
- 21:04Coach Carlie: I mean, just thoroughly left, right, and center.
- 21:07Coach Carlie: I'm shocked that they are actually letting us race there again.
- 21:11Coach Carlie: So I do think that I eventually want to go back and try this race again.
- 21:16Coach Carlie: So it is now turned into the European Championship race, and that was somewhat recently announced, and that's going to be the case for the next couple of years.
- 21:25Coach Carlie: And this time it's in June.
- 21:27Coach Carlie: So I think that that will be a much better opportunity to have a potential for a nicer race and to be able to try this race again.
- 21:37Coach Carlie: This was sort of the beginning of the Pagnilla uh bike park that has these like berms and descents and super flowy, and you can see that I'm actually smiling and having some fun.
- 21:49Coach Carlie: I will say, because I'm I'm noticing it now, and you can't see them on my bike, but I taped my gels to my top tube.
- 21:57Coach Carlie: That worked fantastically.
- 21:59Coach Carlie: I will have to say, high fives for my nutrition plan.
- 22:01Coach Carlie: That went beautifully.
- 22:03Coach Carlie: I had taped my carbs fuel to the top tube of my bike and just ripped them off anytime that I was in that slower climbing section.
- 22:13Coach Carlie: And one of them I ripped a little bit too aggressively and it leaked a little bit and it dripped down my leg.
- 22:20Coach Carlie: So you can see that in the picture on my left knee, and it looks pretty disgusting.
- 22:24Coach Carlie: It almost looks like blood, but it's not.
- 22:26Coach Carlie: That's sugar.
- 22:28Coach Carlie: So, anyway, high fives for the nutrition plan.
- 22:31Coach Carlie: Same thing you can see left and right on this set of slides is the first round of going down this.
- 22:38Coach Carlie: Bike descent, like wooden railing, and then the second time down, you can see how much more destroyed the trails got, and how much more muddy, and just how thoroughly disgusting all of all of us ended up being.
- 22:54Coach Carlie: And then I got to the run.
- 22:57Coach Carlie: And oh my goodness, I was so glad to be done with that bike.
- 23:01Coach Carlie: And listen, I love riding my bike.
- 23:03Coach Carlie: I love riding it so much, but I was just so done with that course.
- 23:10Coach Carlie: And a big lesson that I learned, it was, it was very it was very deflating.
- 23:15Coach Carlie: It was very deflating to be on that course to know that I did it on Thursday.
- 23:20Coach Carlie: And there was maybe, I don't know, one section, one or two sections that I had to get off.
- 23:28Coach Carlie: One to climb.
- 23:29Coach Carlie: The there's a section that's like 19 to 20% grade, and and I kicked myself for not changing out my cassette.
- 23:36Coach Carlie: I actually had a friend of mine who suggested that to me, and I did not.
- 23:39Coach Carlie: I started hunting for them when I got there after doing the course and thought I need a different cassette.
- 23:45Coach Carlie: Wasn't able to find one in time, so I would do that differently.
- 23:48Coach Carlie: I did, however, change my rear tire to something a little bit knobbier.
- 23:54Coach Carlie: Glad that I had done that.
- 23:55Coach Carlie: But it was very deflating, it was very hard, especially having worked so much on addressing my fear of mountain biking and in particular of descents.
- 24:09Coach Carlie: I love descending on the run, especially on trails.
- 24:12Coach Carlie: And I have an opportunity for improvement on descents on the bike, but I've come a long way.
- 24:18Coach Carlie: I mean, I remember you used to stand at the top of a descent and just be like, oh my gosh, how?
- 24:23Coach Carlie: How would I do that?
- 24:24Coach Carlie: So overthinking things, not relaxing, it's not good.
- 24:28Coach Carlie: That's not how you can operate if you're trying to ride a mountain bike.
- 24:32Coach Carlie: Everything has to be in flow.
- 24:34Coach Carlie: Everything has to be not overthinking.
- 24:36Coach Carlie: Everything has to be in a relaxed, calm state.
- 24:40Coach Carlie: If you are like over-gripping your handlebars or trying to force the bike where it needs to go, then it's not going to be pretty.
- 24:47Coach Carlie: Everything has to be relaxed, flowing.
- 24:51Coach Carlie: There has to be a degree of trust and faith that you have both in yourself and in your ability to move and let your bike do what it needs to do.
- 25:01Coach Carlie: And it was very difficult to do that on this course with the degree of slickness and mud when you would take a line you otherwise would when it was drier or not quite as wet, but then you just don't have a guarantee that your back wheel's not going to spin out or your front wheel is not going to spin out, or just do something very quickly that there is zero expectation of happening.
- 25:25Coach Carlie: So I was very glad to get off the bike.
- 25:29Coach Carlie: And that's when I had an official come up to me and say, See, she just, I think she just happened to be standing there.
- 25:37Coach Carlie: And when I was done, I just probably looked so shell-shocked.
- 25:41Coach Carlie: And in fact, she looked at me, she was like, Are you gonna run with your helmet?
- 25:45Coach Carlie: And I said no.
- 25:47Coach Carlie: So I finally took my helmet on and the helmet off.
- 25:49Coach Carlie: And then she said, Are you gonna run with your jacket?
- 25:51Coach Carlie: And I said, Yes.
- 25:53Coach Carlie: And then she was like, Okay, like go run.
- 25:55Coach Carlie: It was almost like, you know, talking to a novice, like, what are you waiting on?
- 26:00Coach Carlie: So I grabbed my race number belt, headed out, and man, the freedom that I felt getting onto that run.
- 26:07Coach Carlie: Oh, I was just so glad to be out there and like feeling like I was going fast.
- 26:12Coach Carlie: And because you do have that short section.
- 26:15Coach Carlie: Anyhow, you will also appreciate here is another boo-boo that I made.
- 26:19Coach Carlie: I used to use race or like shoelaces that are the elastic ones that make it easy to get your shoes on and off.
- 26:26Coach Carlie: And I just got lazy and stopped doing that, and I just generally double knot my shoes, and then I'm just good at getting them on and off my feet.
- 26:34Coach Carlie: Uh, I did not double knot my shoe.
- 26:36Coach Carlie: So sure enough, my shoe came untied.
- 26:38Coach Carlie: So there I was, standing in the middle of after like feeling really good and a nice cadence, having to stop and tie my shoe.
- 26:46Coach Carlie: So there was yet another mistake that I made.
- 26:50Coach Carlie: But as you can see, I'm actually smiling.
- 26:52Coach Carlie: I started to have fun.
- 26:53Coach Carlie: They had another man-made obstacle on the run, another ramp that you had to go off, go up, and they had these little um wooden pieces that you can kind of climb up.
- 27:02Coach Carlie: So that was definitely challenging and disgusting and muddy.
- 27:07Coach Carlie: And then prior to finishing, again, going around the loop on the run, they had encouraged us to, you know, make sure that you look for your number.
- 27:14Coach Carlie: And for some reason, I was like, oh my gosh, I see my number on the penalty and stopped.
- 27:19Coach Carlie: And yeah, and let me just tell you, follow the directions of an Italian woman holding a stopwatch.
- 27:25Coach Carlie: She was very serious, and so I had to stop on the run and hang out with her.
- 27:30Coach Carlie: And she told me that I had a transition violation.
- 27:34Coach Carlie: And so then I waited there for 15 seconds and she released me, which ended up working out well because I was able to take my jacket off and wrap it around my waist going into the second loop.
- 27:46Coach Carlie: So that is when I finally got warm, was going into the second 5k of the race.
- 27:52Coach Carlie: And I usually am like happy going across finish lines.
- 27:57Coach Carlie: I look not happy going across this finish line.
- 28:03Coach Carlie: And uh, there was a woman who I was racing with towards the end, and she was this wonderful British woman, and we were kind of going back and forth, like passing each other on the run, and it was like such great motivation that I needed right there at the very end.
- 28:22Coach Carlie: And um I ended up coming in just ahead of her, and when she came across, we just started like, and you can see her here on the left.
- 28:31Coach Carlie: We ended up just like making friends as you do oftentimes in the middle of a race.
- 28:37Coach Carlie: She was like, Do you think we're last in our age group?
- 28:39Coach Carlie: And I was like, Does it really matter?
- 28:41Coach Carlie: We're finished.
- 28:42Coach Carlie: And they handed us our sort of like metal blankets because again, it was cold, and that tea had never been so delicious that I had gotten.
- 28:53Coach Carlie: And she and I just started like bawling our eyes out, and even though we're smiling in this picture, but because that was so hard.
- 29:01Coach Carlie: And and that's that's what we were crying about.
- 29:05Coach Carlie: It was just so hard and so like soul breaking.
- 29:11Coach Carlie: And I'm very proud that I did it.
- 29:13Coach Carlie: I have zero regrets.
- 29:15Coach Carlie: I would obviously do things a little bit differently if I had the opportunity to, including packing my arm sleeves or getting a full wetsuit prior to going to this.
- 29:23Coach Carlie: But other than that, just reminders that we are all human.
- 29:31Coach Carlie: And when nerves get the best of us, that we sometimes forget things and sometimes operate on a different plane.
- 29:43Coach Carlie: Uh, which is why I'm so thankful to have somebody like Carly on board, our sports psychologist, and seemed like I needed to address things with her regarding this.
- 29:53Coach Carlie: Like, oh my gosh, this is such a big deal.
- 29:56Coach Carlie: Am I up for the challenge?
- 29:58Coach Carlie: Am I good enough?
- 29:59Coach Carlie: Am I worthy enough?
- 30:00Coach Carlie: And I'm sure that some of you out there have felt like that before.
- 30:05Coach Carlie: Am I good enough to be out here?
- 30:07Coach Carlie: Am I worthy enough to be out here?
- 30:09Coach Carlie: And can I satisfy not only my own expectations, but perhaps the expectation of a coach or loved one or family or friends or training partners?
- 30:21Coach Carlie: And at the end of the day, none of it matters.
- 30:24Coach Carlie: That it's your own personal challenge and it's your own personal obstacle that you have to prove to yourself that you can get through.
- 30:33Coach Carlie: So, again, no regrets.
- 30:35Coach Carlie: I did a lot of dumb stuff, but I also had a blast, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to have gone and to have gone with my husband, too.
- 30:49Coach Carlie: And so glad that he was able to take such great pictures, too.
- 30:52Coach Carlie: And you can see post-race, this is me and my bike.
- 30:55Coach Carlie: It was absolutely disgusting.
- 30:56Coach Carlie: The line to wash our bikes was so long, and then of course it was cold, and he popped my hat on me, and uh, we ended up going back to the hotel, which luckily had its own bike washing station because that is that area is very popular, not only for uh cycling, but also for skiing, and it had this great like bike area, and you can see me sitting in this their sort of like bike garage, if you will, packing my bike up.
- 31:23Coach Carlie: He instructed me, he said, Go up, get cleaned up, and I will wash your bike.
- 31:29Coach Carlie: So God bless this man.
- 31:30Coach Carlie: I am so lucky to have him in my life.
- 31:33Coach Carlie: He like rinsed, I mean, there were mud in places you didn't even know you could get mud into on my bike.
- 31:42Coach Carlie: And I went upstairs, I took a shower, and by the time I had gotten dressed, come back down, it was probably 30 minutes later, maybe, and he was still washing it.
- 31:52Coach Carlie: It was disgusting.
- 31:55Coach Carlie: So once we got everything cleaned, we'll be able to put it back in the bike box.
- 31:59Coach Carlie: And I will have to say, if you are ever traveling for a race, you will need to practice your bike boxing skills.
- 32:06Coach Carlie: I love this bike case from Evoch, and it literally is like Legos, like take all of these pieces apart.
- 32:13Coach Carlie: You do have to have a couple of tools with you.
- 32:15Coach Carlie: And then for mountain biking, you do have to have a compressor because I do have tubeless tires.
- 32:19Coach Carlie: You can't obviously take that with you, but they had one in there, which was great.
- 32:22Coach Carlie: But just kind of thinking through the different logistics of how are you going to ship your bike, how or what's the cost going to be?
- 32:30Coach Carlie: How are you gonna get it from the airport to your selected destination?
- 32:33Coach Carlie: In Italy, they tend to have very small cars, so we had to actually rent a van to be able to get it from point A to point B.
- 32:40Coach Carlie: So all of these things are different logistical challenges that you'll need to think through.
- 32:46Coach Carlie: I'm glad that I did what I did.
- 32:47Coach Carlie: Um, I, you know, this case was fantastic as a soft side case.
- 32:51Coach Carlie: And then you can see that post-race, we went to this beautiful Italian cafe and had the most amazing turmisu that I think I have ever tasted in my life.
- 33:03Coach Carlie: So, anyway, that was the story of Xtera World Championships.
- 33:08Coach Carlie: It was in a phenomenal race.
- 33:10Coach Carlie: It was hard, it was fun, it was challenging, it nearly broke me.
- 33:14Coach Carlie: And in fact, when I got back, I didn't ride my bike for quite a while, maybe four to six weeks.
- 33:21Coach Carlie: So, but grateful I did it, and uh hopefully you guys will be hearing more stories.