The Dream. The Race. The World Title.
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The Dream I Started in 2015
At 4:30am on Saturday morning, I was lying awake in my room in Nice wondering why on earth I was so nervous.
I had expected this race to feel different.
I was an age-group athlete, I hadn't spent the year building towards the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships and my focus had been XTERRA, as it has been for the last few years, with only a short period of specific road preparation afterwards. I thought that would take some of the pressure off, but it didn't. I'd hardly slept, felt sick with nerves and somehow found myself more anxious than I had before some of the biggest XTERRA races of my career.
Perhaps that is the thing about racing: it doesn't really matter how experienced you are, or what level you compete at. If something matters to you, the nerves are still there.
And this mattered.
Because this wasn't just another race. It was a dream I'd had back in 2015.
The Dream I Never Achieved
I started triathlon with the goal of qualifying for the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships.
I never made it.
Life took me in a completely different direction. I found XTERRA, became an elite off-road triathlete and built a career around a type of racing that, for years, had very little to do with road triathlon. Then, eventually, I qualified for the World Championships and knew that I couldn't let the opportunity pass.
Arriving in Nice felt slightly surreal. More than 3,000 women were racing, compared with the roughly 20 women who usually line up in an elite XTERRA race. In XTERRA I know virtually everyone on the start line; here, I barely knew anyone.
There was something else that made the scale of it sink in. Around the venue were athletes I'd watched racing at the highest level, including Kristian Blummenfelt and Taylor Knibb, and seeing them there was a reminder of just how big this event was and how far removed it was from my usual racing environment. XTERRA is a small world by comparison, and for a moment I felt quite humbled by that.
But I didn't need to belong to their world.
I just needed to race mine.
By the time I reached the start line, the nerves had started to settle.
Finally It Was Time To Race
The rolling start actually suited me. Eight swimmers went every 20 seconds, so there was none of the usual XTERRA chaos of everyone fighting for position from the gun; I could simply get into the water, settle myself and start swimming.
The first few hundred metres were uncomfortable and I felt sick with nerves, so I deliberately held back slightly and concentrated on settling into the effort rather than trying to force the pace. I tried to latch onto the group ahead, but after the first buoy I lost sight of everyone from my wave and spent the rest of the swim largely on my own.
In some ways, that was probably a good thing. I had no idea how the women around me would swim and no real reference for where I should be, so there was little point worrying about anyone else. Instead, I worked through the buoys in my head from the visualisation I'd done beforehand, gradually building into the effort and trying to hold a strong, controlled pace.
The swim was non-wetsuit, reasonably calm for most of the course but choppy along the back straight, and although the 31:40 wasn't the time I'd hoped for, I came out feeling reasonably strong.
A Little Reminder That I Was The Rookie
T1 was a reminder that, despite being an experienced elite triathlete, I was still something of a rookie at this particular type of racing.
There were bikes and people everywhere, and I had to run up the bank, find my gear bag, get changed, pack everything away again and somehow make my way out through the chaos. I was trying to stay calm and efficient, but then my rear bottle fell off the bike. I stopped to retrieve it, tried to get going again and promptly knocked the front bottle off too. The elastic bands holding my shoes had also come loose, probably after someone had knocked them while racking their bike.
None of that had happened in training, but that's racing. Things happen that you haven't rehearsed, and you either let them frustrate you or you deal with them and move on.
So I dealt with them.
Once I finally got to the mount line, I could settle into the bike and start racing properly.
The Climb That Required Discipline
The opening section was incredibly busy, with streams of riders from the earlier waves ahead of me, and I spent a lot of time calling “on your left” and working my way through the field.
There were bottlenecks, tight turns and sections where overtaking wasn't allowed, which meant occasionally having to sit behind riders who were considerably slower than me, but I reminded myself that the same thing was happening to everyone and there was no point wasting energy getting frustrated.
When the road started climbing, my legs didn't feel fantastic, but I'd experienced that feeling often enough to know that it didn't necessarily mean anything. I kept the pressure on the pedals, stayed within myself and gradually started picking people off.
Then came the Col de Vence.
I'd gone into the race with very clear power targets for the climb, and this was where the discipline I'd been working on really mattered. In XTERRA I'm used to attacking climbs hard and riding on instinct, but Nice required something different. I couldn't afford to turn the climb into a threshold effort and pay for it later; I needed to ride strongly but sustainably and trust the plan.
It was hard, but I found a rhythm and actually really enjoyed it. By the top I'd worked my way past a lot of riders and finally had some space around me.
The descent wasn't quite as fluid as I'd hoped, with cars appearing on roads that should have been closed and parts of the course where it wasn't always obvious exactly where we were supposed to be going, so I made the decision to stay safe rather than take unnecessary risks. It wasn't the fastest descent of my life, but I came through it cleanly and could use the long run back towards Nice to recover.
The final flat seemed to go on forever, but my legs had come back around and I knew I needed to keep pushing all the way to T2.
I finished the bike in 2hrs 50mins, which I was really pleased with considering I'd only been riding my TT bike for around four weeks and had none of the expensive aero set-up that some of the field had. I wasn't trying to prove that equipment doesn't matter, because of course it does, but I did want to prove to myself that you can take what you have, work hard and learn how to use it properly.
Then It Became a Running Race
T2 was strangely calm. The huge exhibition centre where we rack our bikes was almost completely empty, so I took my time, made sure I had everything I needed and headed out onto the run.
I'd deliberately chosen not to have pace displayed on my watch. I knew myself well enough to know that staring at numbers wasn't going to help, so I'd set it to auto-lap every three kilometres instead. I had a pace in mind, but ultimately I knew my body would have the final say.
The first three kilometres were slower than I'd wanted, but rather than fighting the watch or trying to force myself into a number, I accepted that this was the pace I had that day and settled into a rhythm I believed I could hold.
Rob told me early on that I had around a five-minute lead in my age group, but because of the rolling start I had no idea what was happening further back. Some of the younger age groups had started at least 30 minutes after me, so I couldn't simply assume that the gap was enough.
And I didn't want to simply win F35–39 anyway.
My bigger goal was to see how fast I could go against the best age-group athletes in the world, so I wanted to keep pushing until there was genuinely nothing left and finish without wondering whether I'd held back at any point.
The heat was building, but the aid stations were a luxury compared with XTERRA, with plenty of water and ice to throw over myself and keep the temperature under control. On the first lap the course was relatively quiet and I could see the professional women running back towards the finish, which was really motivating, while on the second lap the course became much busier and I had to grab whatever I could from the aid stations as I passed.
6km To Find Something Extra
The problem wasn't really my cardiovascular system. It was my legs.
I wasn't used to the accumulated pounding of running on pavement for this long, and looking back, three weeks of specific run preparation probably wasn't enough to fully prepare me for it. But I'd come to Nice to find out what I could do, not to find out what I could do comfortably.
At the final turnaround, with roughly 6km to go, I knew I was going to have to dig deep.
My legs were smashed, but I kept reminding myself that every second could matter and that I didn't want to get to the finish and wonder if I'd left something out there.
Then I spotted a woman running ahead of me.
I had no idea who she was, what age group she was in or whether she had anything to do with my race, but she was running strongly and I decided she was going to be my target. I caught her at an aid station and managed to get ahead, but she stayed on my shoulder and pushed me all the way through the final section.
When I finally peeled away towards the finish, my legs were barely functioning.
For the last 200 metres I genuinely wasn't sure whether they were going to carry me.
I came down the finish chute, crossed the line and collapsed.
The Quietest Moment of the Day
I was taken straight into recovery and, because I was one of the first age-group athletes to finish, I had this strange experience of feeling as though I'd just won the whole race. The volunteers were clapping and cheering, the buffet was almost empty and everyone seemed genuinely excited to hear about my race and help me with whatever I needed.
After the noise and scale of the morning, it was suddenly incredibly quiet.
I sat down and checked my phone.
1st (F35–39)
World Champion.
The first feeling wasn't euphoria.
It was relief.
I'd publicly said that I wanted to win this race, and I hadn't fully appreciated how much pressure that had created. With my XTERRA background, I felt there was an expectation that I should be able to win, even though this was a completely different discipline and I'd prepared for it in a very different way.
I'd done it.
Then I saw something else.
For a while, I had been leading the overall age-group race.
Two younger women had ultimately gone faster.
By around two and a half minutes.
I was gutted.
That had actually been my biggest goal — to be the fastest age-group athlete overall — and I'd missed it.
It feels strange to admit that after becoming a World Champion, but I think it's also one of the things I like about racing. You can be incredibly proud of something and still have another part of you asking what might have been possible.
My final time was 4:55:48: a 31:40 swim, 2:50 bike and a 1:27 run.
1st of 366 in F35–39.
3rd age-group athlete overall.
And 38th across the entire women's field, including the professionals.
The Race Was Only Part of the Story
But when I think about Nice now, the result isn't actually the part that gets me most emotional.
It's the distance between 2015 and 2026.
The girl who started triathlon wanting to qualify for the World Championships had no idea where the sport would take her. She didn't know she'd find XTERRA, become an elite athlete or spend years travelling around the world racing bikes and running through forests and mountains. She didn't know there would be podiums, World Championships, crashes, disappointments and plenty of days when things didn't go to plan.
She certainly didn't know that, eleven years later, she'd return to the dream she'd started with and become a World Champion.
What XTERRA Gave Me
Perhaps that's exactly how it has to happen. You don't see the whole route when you're standing at the beginning.
What XTERRA gave me was the ability to deal with the route as it unfolded: the grit to keep moving when things go wrong, the strength to keep pushing when you're uncomfortable, the experience of adapting when the race isn't behaving as you'd hoped and the confidence that even when something does go wrong, you will probably find a way through it.
Some of the hardest XTERRAs I've raced have been far more brutal than Nice, and although this was a completely different race, I wasn't starting from scratch. I was bringing all of those experiences with me.
And I was bringing a lot of people with me too.
The People Behind the Result
Rob has been there through all of it — the training, the travelling, the good races, the bad ones, the doubts and all the ordinary days that nobody sees. He knows the work behind the result better than anyone, and having him there on race day, guiding me through the course and telling me when to keep pushing, meant more than I can really put into words.
My parents have been there for even longer, from taking me swimming as a kid to standing at the side of courses years later and supporting whatever goal I've decided to chase. They were there in Nice too, watching and waiting all day, and being able to find them afterwards made the whole thing feel real.
Rob has also made this lifestyle possible in ways that don't show up anywhere on a results sheet. The training volume, the early mornings, the tired evenings when socialising isn't happening, the travelling, the bike preparation, following me around course recces, helping with all the logistics and being there through the low moments as well as the good ones — this life is a shared commitment, and I couldn't do it without that support.
I'm also incredibly grateful to my sponsors who support what I do and allow me to keep pursuing these goals: StructureHaus, FDB and CarterDawes.
Eleven Years Later
The medal is mine.
But the journey that put it around my neck belongs to a lot of people.
And perhaps that's what I'll remember most about Nice.
Sometimes you don't realise how far you've travelled until you turn around and look back.
2015 me wanted to qualify for the World Championships.
2026 me came home a World Champion.
I'm still not quite sure what the girl from 2015 would have thought of that.
I suspect she would have struggled to believe it.
I'm not sure I completely do either.
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