A subpar performance at a competition in August followed, but she nailed her workouts during a training block in Hawaii in September, then went to the starting line for her World Championship feeling she might be on the verge of something special. In Hamburg in June, she came in fourth in her first full Ironman competition, finishing in 8 hours, 36 minutes and 41 seconds, the fastest debut by an American woman. Plews was also the father of young children, meaning that a new mother’s emotional swings, her struggles with breastfeeding or urinating in her training shorts during runs didn’t faze him.Īs Skylar’s first birthday approached, both Sodaro’s numbers and how she felt in training began to improve. Plews gave her targets to hit, and she tried to hit them. Sodaro had hired Plews because of his focus on physiology his data-centric approach, built around measurements of heart rate variability, took her brain and her emotions out of the training. She had been working with a new coach, Dan Plews, a pioneering former triathlete who oversees the training for a half-dozen elite competitors from his home in New Zealand. She sought refuge in the training, in an environment that felt controllable, one in which she was rewarded for powering through physical challenges. Plenty of parents check on their newborns at night for the first few weeks to make sure they are breathing, but Sodaro said she “did that for well over the first year of Skye’s life.” ![]() She had a very particular fear of being trapped during a mass shooting with Skylar. She feared being in public places where she felt like she or her daughter might be unsafe. Sodaro felt like both a bad triathlete and a bad mother, and her anxiety spiraled. She tried therapy but felt like she was being judged, especially when she resisted medication because she feared it would hurt her athletic performance. She also began training again, but with her anxiety sky-high and her hormones off-kilter, she found little joy in her work. After six mostly sleepless weeks, Sodaro took her doctor’s advice and began giving Skylar a bottle. Within two years, she was reeling off wins in Half-Ironman races.Īs it turned out, Skylar had a milk protein allergy that required some major changes in Sodaro’s diet, as well as a posterior tongue tie, which is a band of tissue underneath the tongue that can prevent proper latching, making nursing all but impossible. So she moved to San Diego, a haven for triathletes, and began training with a professional team. She swam competitively when she was younger. She had loved cross-training while living in Arizona to prepare for the Olympic trials. She had targeted making the Olympic team for four years, since graduating from the University of California-Berkeley. The first time Sodaro felt like she had failed at something big was in 2016, when she came up short at the U.S. And she had no idea how to make the anxiety stop - or what might happen if it didn’t. Back then, Sodaro tempered her anxiety and depression with endorphins as she powered through grinding workouts. It was just like those dark weeks after Skylar was born. It was a new existence filled with seemingly limitless opportunities, and everything felt out of control. Her near-constant pursuit of measurable perfection had led directly to that glorious last stretch of the run in Kona, where she surged to a nearly nine-minute lead over her closest competitor, until she could see her daughter, Skylar, waiting on the other side of the finish line.īut then the race was over, and life started again. Sodaro had done all this, comforted by routines and metrics that made her feel successful and in control. But as the endurance world figured she would be basking in glory, she was, in fact, wondering how she would compete again - or even make it through the day. Her story went viral in the endurance world, garnering the kind of attention and endorsement offers she never would have dreamed of even a few weeks before.Īnd that’s when her life began to fall apart.Īll of a sudden, a woman whose fitness and mental fortitude had been steely enough to triumphantly swim, cycle and run for 140.6 miles through rolling seas and across the hot volcanic rock of Hawaii’s Big Island struggled to go to the grocery store without descending into panic.Īfter a rocky winter, Sodaro is preparing to race Saturday for the first time as the Ironman world champion at the Ironman 70.3 Oceanside in Southern California. ![]() Sodaro, then a 33-year-old mother of an 18-month-old, became the first American woman to win the Ironman World Championship, held in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, in a quarter of a century. Last October, Chelsea Sodaro, a triathlon world championship rookie, achieved the grueling sport’s ultimate title.
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