Back to Racing (And Winning) 💪 Crushed: The Kat Matthews Story | Episode 4

Cat Matthews has made history! It was just bad, like real bad. I've seen lesser accidents kill people. I want to be good enough to win again. I don't think I'll ever be fixed or over it. Until I race and perform at the same level or better. Did you guys know that I broke my back? Seriously? Every time you say that. The camp has given me so much confidence. I think mentally I'm in a completely different place to the end of 2022. Something about just getting on with it and jumping the gun and just... I only booked the trip two days before because I was so nervous about going because I thought it would be a failure. Whereas actually it's done the opposite. It's springboarded that confidence. At the moment I've got no negativity. How's Cat going? Great. Yeah, really good. Better than expected still. A little bit of mental ups and downs but really strong. Running, swimming, cycling. Healthy I think is the most important thing. I found out a month ago or so that I had had some injuries that I wasn't aware of. So I had also fractured my sort of pelvis bone in the hip socket and also a rib that they hadn't picked up on. So there was quite a lot of unknowns. That experience of finding that out, even though it wasn't a problem, I found that really hard to deal with because it was like I had emotionally had so much stress and trauma around those areas and yet I wasn't able to process that at the time. And it was sort of came sort of flooded back to me. I'm not experiencing pain that I'm worried about. I am experiencing different niggles that come with either reason or not reason that I struggle with. Every week I notice that it's getting better. Like my mobility, my movement. I can sneeze about it being painful now. That's taken five months. She's definitely still building. She was getting a lot of neck and shoulder pain still. Had some lower back pain after the last Lanzacamp. That seems to be mostly gone. She still wakes up with neck pain, but the swimming volume's gone up. She's running 100k months now, which doesn't sound like a lot to people, but for Cat, that's quite solid anyway. And the riding's improved a lot. Everything is on the up. It's annoyingly to hear for some people, it's just like exceeded expectations again. Maybe people are happy about that. I don't know. It feels like people always talk about the positives and this has been just another positive. I'm back consistently run training. So I'm doing run sessions, which I haven't done in the last six months. That feels really good. It feels like I'm back to being a triathlete and training with appropriate load to be a long distance triathlete. The time I've really committed to the strength work, to the composure, everything I've put into rehab, that is now coming out because I'm able to do run session after run session after run session, which is exciting. She's so in tune with what she's doing. She's naturally cautious. She really appreciates the load can be really quite dramatic. It's been hard not to have as much confidence in the bike as I did last year, but I'm getting much closer to where I was. The other day we got cut up by a car. They just overtook us and turned in front and she screamed to start with an anger and then was just in tears. She's still not past that. That's pretty hard, yeah. She still rides bravely. She's fast, she'll descend well, but it's the stuff she can't control that's really affecting her. My ambitions have been quite strong or I think maybe steadfast. I want to get back. I hate that word. I want to develop myself as I am now to a place that I'm proud of again. That is still rings true today. I just want to be proud of the effort I've put in and who I am and that performance level. That's what I've done in the last five months and that's what I continue to do over the next five months. I'm fully committed to enduring through this challenging period. Pre-race, everything didn't go that smoothly, but also my headspace was in a really good place. The nerves are pretty heavy this morning. Three toilet stops, lots of stuff forgotten. Kat's fine. I'm more nervous, I think. Didn't get off to a great start, but then managed to pull back onto Paula's and Chelsea's feet. Paula led the majority of the swim. Don't know how she did it, as in the sighting was really hard. This tantalizing little gap here between Kat and them is like make or break. If they single out round the buoy and she finds some feet there, it makes the swim. I'm really happy that it was only 90 seconds to Holly. I felt like at that point I'd already won my race. I'd already brushed off the insecurity of not being good enough to be in the pro field anymore and shown that I still had some fitness, that I could compete. That's an amazing swim by Kat. If you think about where she's come from to then get out of the swim with Paula Findlay, which should have been over the moon with the start of last year, let alone now. Out on the bike, I was happy just to play the game. I sat probably too far behind Paula for the best draft possible. 90 seconds. Felt really good, felt sparky, felt comfortable. Got into 2-2 and again, being part of the race, I haven't actually got into 2-2 with many people before. I've always been chasing from way behind on the run, so I was so happy and so excited by that. It's your fun bit now. Well done. You're amazing. I had absolutely no idea where my fitness would be and if I'd completely die after 10k. I just didn't know. I got picked off obviously by Chelsea first, then Tamara, but managed to hold on for third. You're just amazing. What a comeback. It's not a comeback. And it wasn't until we did this final turnaround at about 17k where I realised that I could finish the race and to have podiumed was beyond my expectation. After doing Oceanside, the decision was then, OK, I need to win Texas. Heading back to Texas, just as we were landing and I could sort of see the roads, I don't know what it was, but it was just a wave of emotion that felt like I was scared for my life and I couldn't help but well up a little bit. Mark had been joking since November that I was going to win Texas and obviously it's really great to hear such positivity, but I kept trying to slow him down a little bit and say, yes, I'm going to try and win, but let's just see if I can run for 10 minutes. Let's see if I can run for an hour. And so I had a really good swim start. It was open water. We had a really nice line. It wasn't a big field. It was comfortable. The other girls then actually came past me and I remember just thinking, why can't I hold their feet? And I'm just not sure. So Kat's behind us here. Not actually having a very good swim, I would say. She's like a minute 30 down on Jocelyn and that could be two by the end, possibly. Can't analyze that more than just had a bad swim. Lost, I think, about three minutes to them. Out on the bike, felt really good for the first couple of hours. Just really steadying effort. I think I was beating myself up for being so far behind because I'd wanted to be in touch with that group. Kat's working to make us enjoy this. She's kind of hanging back. Three minutes back on Jocelyn, who is with Maja Staj. Both working really well together. I gave up a little bit midway through the race in terms of my effort levels dropped. My heart rate was dropping. I got to the point where I decided, well, I can run 10 minutes into them. So I'll just run 10 minutes into them. It doesn't matter how far ahead they are on the bike. So I'm instantly happier because she's happier. As soon as Kat starts running, it's like, oh, it's fine. She was like, I want time splits because I think she just wanted to get this job done. It's still a huge ask. She's still like eight minutes behind Maja, who's running well and Jocelyn running well. Kat looks like she's actually running 30 seconds a k faster, which is a lot. I just felt great. I obviously hadn't worked hard enough on the bike for my legs to feel that bad. And I just went for a nice run. I knew that it was done as soon as I'd taken the knees. So crossing the line was just a very satisfying set out to achieve this six months ago. And I've like, wow, like, yeah, just overwhelming enjoyment. After Texas, there was a few things that were obviously a bit of an overload doing that distance without really the training that I think is required. My body was a bit fragile for a while. I tried to believe that I was totally fine, but actually it took me another couple of weeks to really recover. The European Open was my next choice. It's just because I had to put so much into Texas to win it. I couldn't then compete. It would have been detrimental to me physically. I thought that the world champs would be an easier race and still be able to participate on a big field. I was pumped. Like I thought I was in for a really good day. No part of me thought, have I made the right decision? I was totally ready to race really hard. Had a really good start and then lost the feet. Classic. And then the bike, I felt really good. And then I just lost it. Like hit this highway section and mentally just crumble. Like sudden worry of this is stupid. What am I doing? I like can't do this. I just kept spiraling down this horrible spiral of negative. I'm going to ruin this. My back's been a bit sore after Texas. What if, what if this is just too much? I did fail in my eyes, but like I failed at many things in my life and that's okay. For the last six months, it's just been getting on with it and doing it rather than realising just how hard that was. I think I just needed a moment to, yeah, take a moment to just reset. It's really cool to have a season where I am very happy to take some time in the middle of the year to train consistently and really hard. Now I'm trying very hard to just forget about the accident and just move on with training like I would, like it was last year. The way the races have either been scheduled deliberately or just happened to be this year. My next race is the US Open. I will be really competitive there as long as I stay healthy. It's not a, how do I get there? It's just classic daily grind that I actually really love.