Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 114, January 2019 | Page 45

Taking a
Second
Bite
MULTISPORT
Giving up a sport that has been your sole focus for more than
half your life can lead to depression and becoming seriously ill,
as Michelle Krebs knows all too well, but turning to triathlon
brought her back to health and happiness. – BY SEAN FALCONER
A
fter 12 years as a track and field athlete,
specialising in the long jump as well as the
200m and 400m sprints while dreaming
of becoming a pro athlete, things were just not
working out for Michelle. Now 23 years old, the
Somerset West-based athlete admits that she was
just not quite good enough to break through, and
then the injuries happened when she was 19 and
she really lost faith in her dream... and worse was
to follow.
Tough Start
It was early in 2015, two years after leaving the track
behind, that Michelle decided to give multisport a try,
so she went onto Gumtree and bought herself a road
bike. “I took my brother with me to Cape Town to pick
the bike up, because I knew absolutely nothing about
bikes, whereas he had been cycling for a few years.
The bike seemed to fit, I hoped. I then got the basic
gear I needed and went for my first ride, about 10km,
which was hard, and when I got back to our gate I
couldn’t unclip the pedals in time and fell over. I fell
other days as well, often because I couldn’t unclip,
but also one day when I spun out on an uphill when
my chain dropped.”
“Then my dad also got a bike and it was great to
train as a family, but I got so frustrated because
my dad and brother kept dropping me on hills...
until somebody told me my back brake pads were
touching the rim. I had literally been riding with extra
resistance the whole time! Since then I have made a
point of knowing everything about my bike, so that
wherever I am, whatever the problem, I can fix it, or at
least find the problem.”
Having signed up with a coach in July that year, by
September Michelle was ready for her first event,
the duathlon at the Freshpak Fitness Festival in
Clanwilliam. “I opted for the duathlon because I was
not comfortable with the swimming leg yet, although
I did do my first open water swim that weekend, the
“I injured my hamstring, then picked up a stress
fracture in my foot and was in a cast for a while. By
then I was disillusioned with track, anyway, so I told
my coach I’m not coming back,” says Michelle. “But
in the transition that followed I ended up losing a lot
of weight when I became anorexic. It was more a
depression that I fell into after giving up my sport. I
am quite a control freak, and I had always controlled
my training as well as my eating, but when I stopped
track, I had nothing to control my eating.”
“My parents tried to warn me to watch out, and tried
to get me to take up something else, to get me back
into sport, but it took me a while to find what I was
looking for. In those two years, I did long distance
running for the first time and enjoyed it, and I also did
scuba diving and free-diving. I actually suffer from
claustrophobia, so decided to just get out there and
do something to get over those fears, hence diving,
and getting over my fear of the water has really helped
now that I am in triathlon.”
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