Last weekend the Australian Para Triathlon Championships were held at the 2XU St Kilda race in Victoria. We are excited to share some incredible NSW athletes who shined at this event.
Following her win at the Australian Para Triathlon Championships last weekend, we had the chance to grab a Q&A with Monique Muskens, or Mon, to learn more about her story in triathlon so far.
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about you?
I guess the question that everyone is scared to ask is “what is your disability?”. Funnily enough, I never really considered myself disabled until watching the 2024 Paralympics and thinking, these guys are just like me… they don’t seem “disabled” but they all have something that’s happened to them that makes them different. I was born with extreme talipes on my left foot (club foot). I had a cast on my foot when I was 3 days old, all the way until I was 18 months, and have undergone a lot of surgeries and physio. My parents were told I most likely wouldn’t be able to walk. The treatments obviously worked (I can walk!), but the left side of my body still isn’t perfect. I have no movement in my left foot or toes, and very limited muscle development in my left leg. Again, I never really considered that that made me different, I just got on with all the sports that everyone else did as a kid, and sometimes just had to teach myself my own way of doing things (like skiing! very hard to do with no foot control, but I eventually found a way). After watching the Paris 2024 games, I actually went onto the Para Aus website just out of curiosity to see if my history would classify me “para”.
I very soon got a phone call from them, and that’s where my story is now going!
I think for the first time in a very long time, I was actually a little bit nervous the day before the race. The nerves calmed down pretty quickly, and as soon as I got to the bike racks in transition, I totally forgot about any stresses I had. I had to be in the transition area at 6:20am for the para briefing, so it was an early wakeup to get all my nutrition, hydration, and race day prep in with enough time for it to settle.
Before even getting changed, I have a weird tradition of starting high pressure days with a few tuck jumps (lol) to wake up everything in my body (this came from touch, where the team would stand in a circle and do 3 tuck jumps together… it’s crazy what it does to your body).
Two days before the race it was 45 degrees. The morning of race day it was 15 degrees and super windy. I was fortunate enough to be given a wetsuit by one of the legends at Warringah Tri/Ward Coaching, but had never worn it and didn’t have an experience with wetsuits at all. I decided it was probably best not to try new things on race day, so I stood there at the start line shivering my little buns off. Thankfully, the water temperature was warmer than the outside air. I was under the impression that St Kilda was meant to be like a bay. No waves, very still. It was not! The wind was so strong, the waves were so choppy. I’m lucky enough to do weekly swims out at Manly, so my body was defintely prepared for any condition the water threw at me, but that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t see the buoys when I was swimming (and the water was so dirty I couldn’t even see a sillohuette of my arms). I reckon I added a good 100m to my swim with how many times I went off course. I came out of the water thinking everyone was so far infront of me that I had no one to follow. I think I took at least 15 temporary wrong turns/hesitation slow downs throughout the whole race.
When I was on the bike, I had again, underestimated the wind power of the supposedly “flat and easy” course. The road was flat, but the wind resistance one way was absolutely insane. I felt like I was getting blown off the road. This eventually worked in my favour going the other direction, but the head noise cycling into the wind was like no other. For the first 10km, I would ocassionally pass people in the opposite direction, and assumed they were all infront of me in my division, but had no one directly near me to follow, so had a few hesitation slow downs. After getting off the bike, it was 2.5km of crazy head wind along the water before there was any shelter from it. I felt like a cartoon character running with my head down trying not to get blown away. As soon as it was sheltered I felt like I was absolutely flying though. The whole time I was thinking “you just need to catch up to someone here, find someone to follow”.
It was quite the surprise when I got to the finish line and they had the ribbon out for me to run through!
