After swimming 2.4 miles in the rushing waters of the Tennessee River in a downstream current that made her goggles leak, Angela Duncan-Naeth was glad to reach dry land again.
Trailing the leader by five minutes after the first leg of the Little Debbie Chattanooga Ironman triathlon, Duncan-Naeth felt a surge of energy as she hopped on her bike and once she started hammering the pedals there was nothing stopping the 32-year-old from Prince George.
She was on the road to the biggest win of her pro triathlon career.
By Mile 70 of the 116-mile bike segment, Duncan-Naeth caught the wheel of Anne Cleaver of New Zealand and never looked back. After four hours and 50 minutes on the bike and a marathon run which took just 3:15 to complete, Duncan-Naeth broke the tape first in 8:54:55.
Her Sept. 22 triumph in only her third Ironman distance event was proof enough to Duncan-Naeth her plans are not far-fetched to go after a win next year in the granddaddy of all triathlons, Ironman Hawaii - the race that inspired her to take up the sport.
"I did Ironman Melbourne [six months earlier, in March] and had a lot of issues with pacing and nutrition and to come out with a win in Chattanooga at my next Ironman was huge for me," said Duncan-Naeth, from her home in Las Vegas.
"I started working with a new coach, Jesse Kropelnicki, and he really helped me devise a plan for pacing and nutrition that was really beneficial. Before, I was just going by feel but for something like an Ironman, where you're racing for nine hours, you have to really figure out hydration and what to eat."
There's no ready-made formula to train and meet the body's demands while competing in an Ironman race at the world elite level and Duncan-Naeth has had to experiment on the fly, sometimes with less-than-desirable consequences.
At Ironman Melbourne on March 23, her second-ever Ironman-distance race, Duncan-Naeth struggled through nutritional issues aggravated by the fact she contracted giardia, which wasn't diagnosed until she got to her next race in May. The parasite attacks the intestines of humans, causing diarrhea, excess gas, stomach or abdominal cramps, upset stomach and nausea, and all those symptoms presented themselves to Duncan-Naeth during the race. She somehow managed to get through it and finished sixth overall while posting the fastest time on the bike, her strongest event.
In Duncan-Naeth's most recent race, Dec. 7 at Challenge Bahrain, she was surrounded by ITU athletes, world champions and Olympians, the deepest pool of pro triathlon talent she'd ever seen in a race. She placed fifth overall and once again had the fastest bike split.
"It's always been a strength of mine but it's definitely become stronger," said Duncan-Naeth. "I used to ride my mountain bike all the time to track practice [with the Prince George Track and Field Club] and that was a good six miles back and forth."
The Bahrain race was part of the Challenge Family series, a new pro triathlon series which offers $100,000 cash prizes for race winners while covering the cost of travel and expenses for the triathletes. For Duncan-Naeth, who was living in a tent when she first started triathlon in 2008, success has attracted some lucrative sponsorships, magazine covers and a steady stream of race-day pay-cheques that have given her the financial stability that comes with being one of the world's top triathletes.
"Challenge Family is trying to change the sport - they're bringing in a bunch of new races and it's a separate entity from Ironman and they're bringing more money into the sport," she said.
"It's just been a slow progression. You have to put in your time and I made a lot of mistakes along the way, finding different coaches and what works for me. Now I feel I'm just starting to create something and it's pretty awesome."
Duncan-Naeth started working with Kropelnicki in the spring and she says the Boston-based coach has taken a lot of the guesswork out of making plans for training and racing Ironman distances.
"He's just phenomenal, he lays it out, every aspect you could think that an athlete needs - recovery, nutrition, race-day execution, mental thought processes and actual training - he looks at all avenues," she said.
Duncan-Naeth signed with Red Bull in June and also has endorsement deals in place with Pearl Izumi and Shimano. She has also learned the Graydon Group, a local company that employs her mother Kim in Prince George, also plans to sponsor her next year.
"I reached out to them because I'm from Prince George and want to have an impact on the Prince George community," said Duncan-Naeth, who earned a masters degree in physiotherapy at the University of Missouri in 2005. "When I was a child, if I had seen there was a professional triathlete from Prince George that would have inspired me so much. I look at the hockey players who came from our town and I want to be able to provide that somehow to the athletes coming up from P.G.
"I came from a track and field background and as a high school student I didn't realize you could go to school in the United States on a scholarship and I have to give all that credit to Bill Masich, my coach at the P.G. Track and Field Club. He helped solidify a scholarship for me and that enticed me into the world of athletics."
Duncan-Naeth kicked off the 2014 racing season Feb. 16 with a win in the Pan-American 70.3 championship in Panama, where she clocked a course-record time of 4:04:58. The Ironman 70.3-mile series -1.2-mile (1.9 km) swim, a 56-mile (90 km) bike ride, and a 13.1-mile (21.1 km) run - is half the distance of the Ironman. Since 2012, when she posted eight second-place finishes which earned her the nickname 70.3 Bridesmaid, Duncan-Naeth has 10 wins in the 70.3 pro series. This year she won two in June at Honu, Hawaii, and Buffalo Springs Lake, Tex.
The Chattanooga victory took some pressure off in her attempts to qualify for Ironman Hawaii next year. She just missed the cut last year as the 36th-ranked pro. Only the top 35 qualify.
"Some girls raced five Ironmans to qualify and I only raced two and I didn't want to overextend myself because by the time those girls get to Kona they're already fried," said Duncan-Naeth. "It's best to have a strong placing and then go in fresh. It was a little disappointing not to qualify because that was my focus, but I'll be better prepared for it next year."
She resumes racing the 70.3 series in March. Three of her 70.3 results next year can be used to meet the qualifying criteria for Ironman Hawaii. Her next long race is Ironman Texas on May 16. A top-10 finish would be enough to guarantee a spot in the Hawaii race in October. She's hoping her husband of one-and-a-half years, Paul Duncan, will also race in Texas.
While Duncan-Naeth is unquestionably world-calibre, don't expect to ever see her in the Olympics unless they lengthen the race distances.
"My strengths are definitely not at the Olympic level," she said. "I'm a long-distance athlete. The more time on two wheels the better, the more I'm able to run the better - it's just the way my body is."
