“I’m a 50 year-old rookie!” says an excited Mel McQuaid as she puts the finishing touches to her heat acclimatisation on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu before heading to the Big Island for race week.
There are many standout characteristics about the multisport veteran athlete and coach from British Columbia who, in lining up next Saturday, will surpass Natascha Badmann as the oldest professional racer in the event (Badmann was 49 when she made her final appearance in 2016).
But for an athlete whose endurance sport career dates back to the last century, one of the most surprising is that this will be her first appearance at the Ironman World Championship.
“It’s crazy, just crazy,” she adds. “I haven’t even been to the race to watch the athletes I coach. Qualifying just took way longer than I thought!”
No fluke qualification
McQuaid competed in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship as far back as 2010, but only qualified for the full-distance race at Ironman Coeur d'Alene in June, where she finished third to take the final pro spot on offer.
“I legitimately qualified, I did not get a roll-down,” McQuaid points out, having turned 50 the month before the event.
Training out of her home base in Victoria where she lives with partner Mike, and pug, Stevie, she has since proved the result was no fluke by finishing runner-up in Ironman Maryland last month.
Preparing for her visit to the Big Island, she is happy to be staying with friends, tucking herself away on O’ahu and not getting too carried with heightened emotions in the build-up.
“With 2,500 fit women on that island, the tendency to do too much is pretty high,” she says.
“I’ll respect the fact that I just finished an Ironman and kind of hide on this beautiful little island and do my own thing this week. Then it’s Kona week. It’s crazy, and you don’t have time to do a bunch of training.”
Having attempted to make the Canadian Olympic team as a mountain biker for Sydney 2000, McQuaid moved to triathlon and claimed three Xterra world titles in 2003, 2005 and 2006 and was ITU Cross Triathlon World Champion in 2011 and 2017.
A step into the unknown
But despite her experience, she has still been taken aback by the interest over her participation in the event.
“Xterra was a really cool sport and I got a lot of media attention, but it was nowhere near as big a deal as what I’m experiencing now. Now I understand why people organise their season around this race on that island, and why it makes such a big difference to people’s careers to perform there.”
As for her own expectations, they are not geared around a finishing time or position, McQuaid stressing that for such a hot race, aged 50 and four weeks on from her last event, it is a step into the unknown.
“Instead of getting wrapped up in how I'm going to stack up against other pros, all I want to do is execute my plan and see what happens. If I have a result to be proud of, that's cool.
"It's an execution I'm proud of, that's cool too. You only get to be a rookie one time and I don't want to ruin it by being pissed off halfway through the race because I'm not where I thought I would be.”
It will be the fulfilment of a goal that started in earnest in 2019 and after a series of near misses, has finally come to fruition.
“Linsey [Corbin] beat me in Wisconsin [in 2019] and took the spot. Three girls in Arizona beat me and I missed a spot. Then Covid hit and I knew it was going to get a little harder.
"Then I went to Chattanooga, and missed it by one. I kept going after it with the same enthusiasm: ‘Let’s go. Try not to fail’ and this just happened to be the season.”
As for being on the start-line as a 50-year-old, Mel McQuaid says: “ It’s kind of like a fairytale. I never thought about it when I started the year. I was just fit and healthy and was going to try again.
“Fifty really triggers some emotional responses. Is it really that much different had I done it at 49? No, but because of the number 50, it’s quite scary for a lot of people. But I didn’t plan it this way at all.”
Mel McQuaid on how to excel at triathlon at 50 plus
McQuaid explains how she retains the motivation to perform and why comparing yourself to your past life is a recipe for disaster.
“I race to pursue more growth and knowledge. A lot of my professional racing is geared toward experiential learning as a coach and as I’ve gotten better as a coach, I’ve improved as an athlete.
“Athletes can get into a corrosive mindset, particularly when they are older, where racing is really outcome focused. You can race to win championships, have sponsors, fancy bikes, all these things - and that’s who I was when I was racing Xterra. I either won or I failed.
“The problem with that is it’s infinitely unsustainable. At some point somebody is going to beat you. Or you get injured. And that’s what happened to me.”
Mel McQuaid dislocated her left foot and broke her tibia, fibula and lateral malleolus in 2016.
“It created this massive shift in my mindset: What can I learn from sport? I have fewer expectations of ‘getting’ something but more of ‘experiencing’ something.
“My main values are growth and health. I want to be healthy and I’m a pretty voracious learner. I spent all the time when I was injured with my ankle doing courses on strength training. The more you learn, the more you learn you need to learn, so it helps to really keep you inspired to learn new things.
“I was told I’d never run fast again, but I really wanted to run with my girlfriends, so that was not an option. Sport brings me a community of friends who are fit and healthy and I just wanted to be a part of that. Even when things started to get better, I just kept that mindset."
Mel McQuaid on staying competitive as a professional
“Every year I evaluate whether I am still competitive and where there are gaps in performance that I can improve. I’m not delusional about being a professional athlete, but I am astonished about how much improvement I have had this late.
“I think this is where age-group athletes who are older can get introspective. Maybe their run split is slower, but their bike split could get 10min faster.
"Or if they finally learn how to swim, they might get out of the water in a different pack. They can still get the end result they were chasing, but by approaching it in a different way.
“Ironman is complicated and there are a lot of moving parts you can get wrong, but in a 9hr-plus race, there are areas where older athletes can really get a lot better. Be open-minded about changes and don’t set a timetable. That’s infinitely sustainable.”
- How to watch the Ironman World Champs women's race
- Kona: Ironman World Championship women's course preview
Top image credit: Patrick McDermott/Getty Images for Ironman
