Six years ago, Karsten Madsen was ready to quit the sport of triathlon for good.
Circumstances had hit him hard in 2010 and he didn’t think he could continue. In February 2010, then 18 years old, Madsen was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a heart condition which causes an irregular and often very fast heart rate, which can lead to symptoms such as heart palpitations, fatigue, and shortness of breath.
Despite the diagnosis, Madsen soldiered on and continued to compete. But in his first race back after his diagnosis, he crashed and got a concussion. Months of suffering from nagging headaches followed, but again, he persevered and kept on racing.
That August, he competed in the Tecumseh Triathlon in Windsor. Since the crash, he’d been having mixed results.
“Some of the races would go really well, some of them would go terribly,” says Madsen. The Tecumseh Triathlon went well. Sort of.
He had a terrible swim, coming out of the water in 11th place and over a minute back of the race leaders. As he started the ride he knew he’d have to put in some serious work to get to the front of the race, and he didn’t back down.
“I was biking my way through the field,” says Madsen. “I was going by all these pros who had beaten me for my whole life, and it was the first time I was out-riding them.”
Then, without warning, it was over. With five kilometres to go on the bike, he punctured a tire and his race was finished. This was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Madsen. He was done with triathlon.
“I wasn’t quitting over a flat,” he says. “Everything had gone so shit that whole year, and I was just done.”
He emailed Barrie Shepley, his coach at the time, telling him his plans to leave the sport. It wasn’t a Should I quit? or a Talk me out of this email. His mind was already made up; he was just filling his coach in.
He got a long email in response. Shepley told him about an off-road triathlon in Milton. Madsen had raced an XTERRA in Ellicottville, N.Y. the year before, and Shepley knew he’d enjoyed it. He told him to go to the race in Milton and give triathlon another chance. Madsen listened to his coach and gave it one last shot.
With nothing to lose, Madsen went all in and won the race. After the win, someone told him about an XTERRA in Whistler where several big-name pros would be racing. With his confidence renewed, Madsen decided to head out West for a new challenge.
In his first major competition as a professional, Madsen faced the likes of Josiah Middaugh and Conrad Stoltz, two XTERRA greats who were his inspiration to try his first off-road race a year earlier.
For the first time in an elite race, his swim was better than the majority of the field. He started the bike alongside Stoltz, a four-time XTERRA World Champion, but from that point on, Madsen says that he got “absolutely shelled.”
He crossed the line nearly 25 minutes after Middaugh, the eventual winner, as the last pro male. The adequate result didn’t discourage Madsen, however, and after competing with some of the world’s best off-road triathletes, he had newfound motivation. Just as quickly as it had disappeared, his love for triathlon was back. He was hooked once again.
Fast forward five years to 2015 when Madsen earned a spot as a member of the Regional Training Centre in Guelph, where he began training with ITU and Olympic athletes such as Joanna Brown and Andrew Yorke. Although an off-road specialist, Madsen finds that training with ITU athletes has taken his fitness to the next level — the level required to win.
During the 2015 season, Madsen’s focused training paid off as he placed in the top 10 at three XTERRA events and won his first cross triathlon Canadian National Championship. The 2016 season was even more successful, with top finishes at XTERRAs in Milton and Victoria, two more XTERRA podium finishes at races in Argentina and Alabama, a second cross triathlon National Championship and a third place finish in the XTERRA Pan American Tour.
One of Madsen’s proudest moments as an athlete came in 2016 in Victoria, where he beat Brent McMahon. Madsen considers McMahon to be Canada’s “most well-rounded triathlete,” and for good reason. McMahon is a two-time Olympian, an Ironman 70.3 and Ironman champion and a former podium finisher at the XTERRA Worlds in Hawaii.
“To have a result where, for the rest of my life, I’ll have my name ahead of his, just blows my mind,” says Madsen.
After that race, which few thought he could win, Madsen gained new confidence.
“That’s when I realized I was turning a page. I’d wondered if I was ever going to be able to win against the top-end guys.” Well, after Victoria, he proved that he could.
After such a memorable season, it was hard to see how things could go wrong. However, anyone who has ever competed in a triathlon understands that you can only control so much on race day. In his final race of the 2016 season, in Hawaii at the XTERRA World Championships, Madsen had an unlucky blow.
His first attempt at the Hawaii off-road race started off just about as poorly as it possibly could. The swim consisted of two loops, with the athletes exiting the water after the first lap and running along the shore to start the second lap. Just before the end of the first lap, Madsen ran into some trouble.
“A wave sucked me up and then slammed me down,” he says. He landed on his neck, but the trouble didn’t stop there. “I was underwater, completely anaerobic, sucking in seawater. I got rocked, grinding against the bottom. I was like, ‘I’m going to drown.’” Just as he had this thought, he found the surface and was able to come up for air.
With such a physical setback, it was no wonder that things weren’t right after that. He finished the swim and started the bike leg. Nutrition is the key to success in any race, and in a humid place like Hawaii, it’s even more important. Knowing this, Madsen tried to take in calories as he started the ride, but nothing would stay down. He felt dizzy and had to get off of his bike.
“Then all of it came out,” he says. “It got to the point where I was dry-heaving.”
After ridding his body of everything, Madsen was exhausted. He’d used up half of his nutrition supplies and it wasn’t even 20 minutes into the ride. Although he knew he would question his decision later, he opted to drop out of the race. Even now, he still questions whether it was the right call. That’s the athlete inside of him; the part that shuts his body up when it hurts and tells him to keep going.
In the medical tent after the race, Madsen was hooked up to two IVs. Had he ignored his exhaustion during the race, he may have found himself in a much more serious situation down the road. Although he might continue to question himself until next season when he gets another crack at Hawaii, dropping out was the right call.
For the time being, Madsen is back home in Guelph, preparing for another season. With the ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships being held in Penticton, B.C. this August, Madsen wants to be in top form.
“That’s the biggest goal for next year,” says Madsen. “I want to win Penticton. I think I have the skill set to do it and after a good off-season, I think I’ll be in the conversation to be a contender.”
As for Hawaii, he isn’t expecting a win there just yet.
“It takes time to get it all sorted,” he says. Josiah Middaugh, Madsen’s inspiration to move to off-road racing, won the XTERRA Worlds for the first time in 15 tries last year. Madsen knows that, with patience and hard work, he can get there eventually.
He’s in no rush.
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