XTERRA World Championship Italy: Race Recap & Lessons Learned

Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host, Coach Chris Newport, and this is a long overdue podcast. This is all about my experience at the XTERRA World Championship in Italy in September of 2025, and I've been putting this off long enough, so finally put together a fun little slideshow of some pictures, even though this is not all of them. 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. And oh boy, were there a lot of them. And then perhaps kind of what's next for me. 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. So I was lucky enough to qualify for the World Championship in September for XTERRA through the USA National Championship, which was in Alabama. Great course, super fun race. Ended up actually placing second in my age group behind a woman from Argentina. However, because she is not from the US, I was— and I ended up being crowned the USA National Championship because in In order to do that, you have to be from the country of origin for whatever the world championship is. So I got this cool jersey and felt really lucky to be able to get a spot to the world championships. So the Worlds had 3 years in Trentino, Italy, which if you have not been, I highly, highly, highly recommend this area of the world. It is fantastically beautiful. If you are looking at the pictures right now, I mean, the mountains are pristine. It's the Dolomites. I mean, you just, you can't get better scenery than this. It almost looked like AI or like a cartoon or something. It is just wonderfully beautiful. So highly recommend that. There's great biking there. There's amazing trails. And oh boy, it is quite the challenge. Beautiful water and just a fun place. To be in general, and delicious food, might I add, of course. 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. So I'm showing the swim course first. 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, but obviously with XTERRA it is swim, mountain bike, and trail run rather than swim, road bike, and road run. Typically, that is how the Olympic distances are done. And with XTERRA, 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. So I will get to that here in a moment, but a little foreshadowing for you. But this is the swim course, so it goes in sort of this like W or M shape depending on how you want to look at it, and they call it an Australian exit. So first and foremost with the swim, and I even have it sitting here because I am a travel nerd 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. So I have this written out. We left, I believe, on a Tuesday, and the race was on Saturday. So when I wrote this out right before I packed my clothing, on Saturday the high was supposed to be 60 degrees, and before we left, the water temperature was about 68, 70 degrees. So I brought my shorty wetsuit. I've been used to racing in that wetsuit for forever. I love that suit, super comfortable in it, gets on and off super easy. I, I love it. So anyway, I brought that— more foreshadowing. But anyhow, you can see this Australian exit, this W-shaped course. Come race day, the temperature had dropped quite significantly, so this swim course Uh, it kicked my butt, and I've never had that experience ever in the 25+ years that I've been doing triathlon until this time. I had my first panic attack in the water. All of you new people who have been in the open water and like, oh my gosh, this is really crazy, I had my first experience of that, 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. It was super overcast. It rained a ton. So the course was disgusting. But let's just say when I started the race, I was the only one in a shorty wetsuit. The only one. I had foreigners looking at me and whispering about like, that lady has lost her mind. So I definitely underpacked. I didn't bring my sleeves. I don't necessarily think I needed a different cap, but I probably should have brought it. Honestly, I needed a full wetsuit. I needed sleeves and the whole nine yards. I didn't have it. That contributed to me not being able to warm up, so I didn't warm up prior to the race, which I always warm up if I can. In the water, um, and I wasn't able to do that because I knew that I was going to get too cold just standing around because the air temperature was in the low to mid-40s Fahrenheit and it was overcast. And, um, I was just basically relying on some push-ups and squats and to get me warm. 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, 200— at least 200 meters. Once I got my face in the water, once I got moving, it was very cold, but I was feeling really good. But then when you exit and have to jump back in, that made me cold again. And I made the mistake of jumping in with my leg straight instead of more like a lifeguard style or diving in, which I hadn't practiced. That's on me. And yeah, that slowed me down too. And I, uh, while I found a rhythm at the end, I could never really get warm. So I was, I was cold kind of like from, from the get-go. So anyway, that was an interesting experience with the Australian exit. So would I have done things differently? Absolutely. Would have had way more of a wetsuit on. I would have practiced those Australian exits a little bit more prior to actual race day. All right, so next up, the bike course. I wanted to highlight this section. It is a 32K bike course and it's split into two 16K loops, so it's roughly about 20 miles for all you folks who like the conversion. And climbing was more than 1,100 meters across the entire course, which is— multiply that by at least 3 in terms of feet. This particular section of the course. You have the first 2K super flat, and then you hit this climb. And I was lucky enough to be able to come and practice the, um, do the race course on Thursday, so I was able to get a feel for what it looked like. It was very muddy on Thursday, but it wasn't nearly to the degree that it was on race day. But if you can see this, there is a good majority of the 16K loop So from 10.5 or 11K, there is an average grade of 7% with a max grade of almost 20%. So that's an 8.5K climb. And then basically you just descend through this Paganella Bike Park, which has these like smooth berms. I'll show you some pictures here in a moment. Some like really fun switchbacks and some stone descents, as it says in the description. And then you wind through the city of Molvena, which is bananas, down some stairs, and it's a really cool experience. So anyway, I show you this section because in my head it was 2 16K loops with a total— and I was thinking of the total elevation gain across one loop, not across this section. 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. So again, on me for not truly absorbing what the bike course was going to look like. But holy smokes, you guys, this bike course was absolutely beautiful. All right, so on to the run course. 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. It was just so amazing. Two 5K loops. Yes, there was some climbing there, and you can see this little section right at about 1.5K where you're cruising along out of transition and then you literally like climb straight up. I think the average climb for that 800-meter section or so is like 23%. 28%, something like that. I mean, basically you're hiking up a hill. It's big, but fun. All right, so this is transition, and boy, boy, do I have some stories about this. So you can see me coming in on race day for transition. You can see the little black boxes. So everybody got a black box. That sounds like something that comes on an airplane. It's not, it's just a container. So this is what's different between USA Triathlon and this ITU style of racing is is that in that box you have to put everything that you discard into that box as you use it. And I did not do that because I did not pay attention enough to the directions or the instructions. So you guys, I literally did like everything wrong. Not everything, but oh boy, a lot. 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. Um, the day before. I mean, just poured all day, well into the night. Everything was so wet. So in order for everything to not pool up in those boxes, they— in those little transition boxes, they put them upside down. And then as we got there, we could turn everything back upright and set out what we needed to set out. All right. And another fun rule is you can notice when I'm going into transition, I do not have my helmet on. And then once I make it into transition, I do have my helmet on. So even though I was not physically riding my bike, they require you to put your helmet on. To walk your bike into transition. So whatever, I will follow those rules, no problem. 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, and that earned me a penalty. So lucky me, and I'll talk about that later on in the run course, 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. So how about that? So anyway, um, this next slide just shows how pristinely beautiful this place is. Again, Lake Malveno, you guys need to go. It is fantastically beautiful. It looks like not real. It's just amazing. So prior to the race, some of these get into professional photos, some of these get into the photos that my husband I was taking with me. You can see on the left, this— that shows the Australian exit. There's a dock that goes out, and they had lined it with blue carpet. 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 on from there. You can see their firefighters and their medics off to the side. They're all in their red getups. And you can see what, generally speaking, most humans are wearing because it's in the 40s. So some winter hats, some winter coats. 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. No, it was not that at all. The temperature dropped quite drastically, and we actually had to go buy hats, like like a winter hat. And then you can see on the right here, this is all the women getting ready for the swim at the race start. And of course they're all smiling beautifully. Why wouldn't they smile beautifully? In fact, I think that's me right there on the right, uh, the only one with bare skin showing. And, um, this woman next to me, she's got her long sleeve suit on, she's got a neoprene cap under her hat, and me, not so much. I'm in my shorty freezing my little patootchie off. 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. Once I did finally get into a rhythm felt great and then had to get out. And putting my hands on my head, that probably is like an indicator that I was fixing my cap, but that was like, this is gonna be the way this race goes. As I got out, it just— I just got cold because it was cold. And then getting back into transition, I had practiced transitions. I was going to be all ready to put my shoes on and then buckle them more specifically once I got on the bike. I was going to put my gloves on my bike and then put them on later on in the race. One ended up falling on the ground, and of course you can see it in my hand there. 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. So, um, and then of course I did put my jacket on. That was a definite win on my part. 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. Um, and that said, all the pros of course did not have extra layers. We were able to watch them because they went off earlier. We were able to watch them on the big screen. So if you get a chance to look back at— I'll link to it— the XTERRA 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. I mean, the pros were even getting off their bikes because it was so muddy. Anyway, this is me, um, getting on all of my apparel. There's my wetsuit that's sitting on the ground and shouldn't be. That again earned me a nice penalty. And then as I exited transition, you can see how muddy everything got. I mean, it was so disgusting. They— so you would exit transition and they created a couple of man-made ramps, and you can see them in the picture here. It's not a little ramp, it's a big ramp. And, and they're neat, 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. So I'm glad that Jay was able to capture this. So So that was my opportunity. 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. They had spectators and staff who were holding on to the, the structure so that it wouldn't fall over because there were so many people on it all at once trying to climb up. And they had like chicken wire on the ramp so that it's less likely to slip. It didn't matter because when you have all of this mud and all, you know, all over the entire ramp, it would— it was just like a hot mess. 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. So that was an interesting unexpected obstacle, and then we had to do that twice. So super neat, but really hard when you have all these people who are basically bottlenecking into that space. 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, 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. This, the picture in the center. So after going through that entire bike course, it was just like, it was so sloppy, it was so muddy. Um, the second loop was far worse than the first, but it was still disgusting. It took me to go, um, 20 miles, it took me almost 4 hours, I think right at 4 hours, something like that, which is insane. Um, and my dear mother was like, you spent so long on the bike course. I was like, thank you for adding salt to my wounds. 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. 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. But I think this is my first time down my bike still looks somewhat clean. 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. I mean, literal head to toe. I couldn't even use glasses. 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? There were people dropping chains left, right, and center, especially going after like very muddy descents, um, that people would either— maybe they would ride them, maybe they would hike them down, and then they would just drop their chain. So, uh, luckily I only dropped my chain once, and that was pretty much the only technical issue that I had. But I mean, it was just pushing your bike not only with you and your bike but also all this added mud. 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. The only thing that we got away with is that it wasn't currently raining when we were racing, thank goodness. But we destroyed that park. I mean, just thoroughly left, right, and center. I'm shocked that they are actually letting us race there again. So I do think that I eventually want to go back and try this race again. 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. And this time it's in June, 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. This was sort of the beginning of the Pagnella 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. I will say, because I'm, I'm noticing it now, you can't see them on my bike, but I taped my gels to my top tube. That worked fantastically. I will have to say high fives for my nutrition plan. That went beautifully. 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. And one of them I ripped a little bit too aggressively and it leaked a little bit and it dripped down my leg. So you can see that in the picture on my left knee, and it looks pretty disgusting. It almost looks like blood, but it's not— that's sugar. So anyway, high fives for the nutrition plan. Same thing, you can see left and right on this set of slides is the first round of going down this 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, all of us ended up being. And then I got to the run, and oh my goodness, I was so glad to be done with that bike. And listen, I love riding my bike. I love riding it so much, but I was just so done with that course. And a big lesson that I learned, it was, it was very, it was very deflating. It was very deflating to be on that course, to know that I did it on Thursday and there was maybe, I don't know, one section, one or two sections that I had to get off one to climb. The— there's a section that's like 19 to 20% grade, and, and I kick myself for not changing out my cassette. I actually had a friend of mine who suggested that to me, and I did not. I started hunting for them when I got there after doing the course and thought, I need a different cassette. Wasn't able to find one in time, so I would do that differently. I did, however, change my rear tire to something a little bit knobbier. Glad that I had done that, 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. I love descending on the run, especially on trails, and I have an opportunity for improvement on descents on the bike, but I've come a long way. I mean, I remember used to stand at the top of a descent and just be like, oh my gosh. How, how would I do that? So overthinking things, not relaxing, it's not good. That's not how you can operate if you're trying to ride a mountain bike. Everything has to be in flow. Everything has to be not overthinking. Everything has to be in a relaxed, calm state. If you were like overgripping your handlebars or trying to force the bike where it needs to go, then it's not going to be pretty. Everything has to be relaxed, flowing. 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. 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 is 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. So I was very glad to get off the bike, 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, and when I was done, I just probably looked so shell-shocked. And in fact, she looked at me, she was like, are you gonna 'Are you gonna run with your helmet?' And I said no. So I finally took my helmet off, and then she said, 'Are you gonna run with your jacket?' And I said yes. And then she was like, 'Okay, like, go run.' It was almost like, you know, talking to a novice, like, 'What are you waiting on?' So I grabbed my race number belt, headed out, and man, the freedom that I felt getting onto that run— oh, I was just so glad to be out there and like feeling like I was going fast. And because you do have that short section. Anyhow, you will also appreciate— here is another boo-boo that I made. I used to use lace or like shoelaces that are the elastic ones that make it easy to get your shoes on and off, 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. I did not double knot my shoe, so sure enough, my shoe came untied. 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. So there was yet another mistake that I made. But as you can see, I'm actually smiling. I started to have fun. They had another man-made obstacle on the run, another ramp that you had to go off— go up, and they had these little wooden pieces that you can kind of climb up. So that was definitely challenging and disgusting and muddy. And then prior to finishing, again going around the loop on the run, they had encouraged us, you know, make sure that you look for your number. And for some reason I was like, oh my gosh, I see my number on the penalty, and stopped. And yeah, and let me just tell you, follow the directions of an Italian woman holding a stopwatch. She was very serious. And so I had to stop on the run and hang out with her, and she told me that I had a transition violation. 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. So that is when I finally got warm, was going into the second 5K of the race. And I usually am like happy going across finish lines. I look not happy going across this finish line. 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. 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— we ended up just like making friends, as you do off Oftentimes in the middle of a race, she was like, 'Do you think we're last in our age group?' And I was like, 'Does it really matter? We're finished.' 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. 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. And, and that's, that's what we were crying about. It was just so hard and so like soul-breaking. And I'm very proud that I did it. I have zero regrets. 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. But other than that, just reminders that we are all human, and when nerves get the best of us, that we sometimes forget things and sometimes operate on a different plane, 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, like, oh my gosh, this is such a big deal. Am I up for the challenge? Am I good enough? Am I worthy enough? And I'm sure that some of you out there have felt like that before. Am I good enough to be out here? Am I worthy enough to be out here? And can I satisfy not only my own expectations, perhaps the expectation of a coach or loved one or family or friends or training partners. And at the end of the day, none of it matters, 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. So again, no regrets. 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. And so glad that he was able to take such great pictures too. And you can see post-race, this is me and my bike. It was absolutely disgusting. The line to wash our bikes was so long, and then of course it was cold, and he popped my hat on me, and we ended up going back to the hotel, which luckily had its own bike washing station because that, that area is very popular not only for cycling but also for skiing. And it had this great like bike area, and you can see me sitting in this— there's sort of like bike garage, if you will, packing my bike up. He instructed me, he said, go up, get cleaned up, and I will wash your bike. So God bless this man, I am so lucky to have him in my life. He like rinsed— I mean, there were mud in places you didn't even know you could get mud into on my bike. 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. It was disgusting. So once we got everything cleaned, we were able to put it back in the bike box. And I will have to say, if you are ever traveling for a race, you will need to practice your bike boxing skills. I love this bike case from Evoc, and it literally is like Legos, like take all of these pieces apart. You do have to have a couple of tools with you And then for mountain biking, you do have to have a compressor because I do have tubeless tires. You can't obviously take that with you, but they had one in there, which was great. 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, how are you going to get it from the airport to your selected destination. 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. So all of these things are different logistical challenges that you'll need to think through. I'm glad that I did what I did. I, you know, this case was fantastic as a softside case. And then you can see that post-race we went to this beautiful Italian cafe and had the most amazing tiramisu that I think I have ever tasted in my life. So anyway, that was the story of XTERRA World Championships It was a phenomenal race. It was hard, it was fun, it was challenging. It nearly broke me. And in fact, when I got back, I didn't ride my bike for quite a while, maybe 4 to 6 weeks. So, but grateful I did it, and, uh, hopefully you guys will be hearing more stories.