Meet Christoph Schlagbauer

November 22, 2013

When we bumped into Christoph on a seawall in Kona we planned to feature him as a random age grouper, but in his first Ironman World Championship start he finished in the runner-up spot in M18-24 with a time of 9:03.

Slowtwitch: Thank you for your time.

Christoph Schlagbauer: Thank you Herbert for the opportunity to talk to you, it's a real honor for me. I hope my Austrian-English won't stress the native English speakers too much.

ST: While in Kona we bumped into you before the race and had considered doing a random age grouper chat, but after your M18-24 runner-up finish we will just run it as a regular interview if that is cool with you.

Christoph: Well, that's right, but after talking to you on that seawall, where I told you about my age group victory at the Ironman Austria, you already mentioned that it's very hard to find a kind of „random age grouper“ on Hawaii. As a reason you gave the argument that everybody had had to achieve a lot in a previous Ironman – during the swim I finally realized that too. Actually that's more than cool with me – it's just amazing to get the chance to present myself as a young athlete here!

ST: It is quite easy to find a random age grouper in Kona, but there they mostly happen to be pretty fast.

Christoph: Absolutely!

ST: We already talked to the age group champion Amos Gollach. Did you see him during the race?

Christoph: Unfortunately, yes. He passed me after about 35k while I was struggling. This was definitely the worst moment to see a guy with bib # 2102 running past me, because it was impossible for my body to counter ‘the attack.’ I had informed myself about the distribution of the bib numbers in the race, but after talking to him I now know that it wasn't an attack, but rather his normal pace in the run. He was unbelievable fast considering the time of the race. Obviously I passed him on the bike some time during the race, because he had a better swim – but he was one of more than 600, so I didn't really recognize all the people of my age group. Of course I would have preferred only seeing him after crossing the finish line, but he deserves first place! I didn't lose the gold medal – I won the silver medal!

ST: He said that you guys briefly chatted afterwards. Do you recall what was said?

Christoph: To be honest – I was kind of drunk after drinking a few beers and cocktails in the afternoon. But what I remember is that we shortly talked about the race. In particular about when he passed me, my bike split and a little bit about our future and when and where we'll may meet each other again. In other words, we didn't talk about anything special – but I know now that we won't be in the same category next year anymore, because he'll still start as an age grouper and I'm going pro.

ST: How early did you arrive in Kona?

Christoph: I had the possibility to arrive very early. At my university in Austria we have three months of holidays in the summer (July-September) and for my summer job I just had to work until the middle of September. So I used the opportunity and booked my flight on the 18th of September. I think as a Middle-European guy acclimatization is a very important part of the preparation for a race with weather conditions like it is the case with Big Island! Last year I participated in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Henderson, where I only arrived six days before race day and stayed three weeks after the race for a road trip. As a consequence I had a bad race in Vegas – in contrast to this year on Hawaii. I guess if you want to go professional, you have to organize a trip to a race in a more professional way. Obviously it worked .

ST: I looked back the last two years and did not see your name in the results. Does that mean that Kona 2013 was your first start there?

Christoph: So you are talking about the years 2012 and 2011? Oh no! The year 2011 was my first season I really practiced triathlon and in which I started in my first 70.3. But also it was the first time I watched parts of the livestream of the World Championship and of course it looked really desirable! As I already mentioned above I was in Vegas last year, which was my destination in 2012, and after that I participated in my first Ironman in June 2013 in Klagenfurt/Austria, which was my Kona- qualifier.

ST: How old are you?

Christoph: I turned 24 in September.

ST: You mentioned Ironman Austria and qualifying for Kona there. Were you happy with your effort in Klagenfurt?

Christoph: That's right and yes, I was very happy, hell yeah! Although, I have to say that I wasn't very happy with my race itself. After a good swim the first half of the bike course was maybe a little bit too fast. I rode the same pace as Andi Raelert and I struggled after a time penalty at about 100k – of course I say that this penalty was unjustified – but everyone does. My legs felt like… I can't find the right word for it in English… but they were damaged. Finally, I finished in 9:13, which was really great for my first Ironman. However, I actually wanted to go 8:50.

ST: So when will we see the sub-9?

Christoph: Like the guys of Mando Diao say: God knows. I don't really know where my next Ironman is going to be, but hopefully it will happen there. Naturally, it depends on the race course and of course everybody says that the time is secondarily, but sub-9 sounds nice and I think it will only be a question of time which I have enough.

ST: Your final time in Kona was 9:03:22. Did you pay during the run for that 4:34:59 bike split?

Christoph: That is very hard to say. You don't really know what would have happened, if I hadn't pushed this hard on the bike. But during the swim I had time to think about the upcoming race more clearly than the days before, where I had all sorts of thoughts in my head. Actually most of it was rather pointless and so I decided to go a little bit faster from the beginning after T1, which I planned to master as fast as possible. The watts were a little bit higher than they should have been, but that was okay. The longer the race lasted, the bigger was the group gathering around me. At this moment I realized that I had to slow down a bit and concentrated myself to follow a pack I had formed myself in a fair way. Still it was quite difficult for me as I had to make sure to close enforced gaps in between. After 120k there was a uphill part and I was already fed up with biking with about 30 guys drafting. That was the moment when I decided to start an attack and I was able to leave the group behind. My motivation for this attack was that I realized that it was possible to go 4:30 with ignoring the fact that there would be a marathon afterwards. So I just did it and managed to catch up with Sam Gyde, the fastest age-grouper (on the bike) about whom you wrote about some weeks ago. For the last quarter of the bike course we were pushing really hard against the Muhmuku headwinds. But coming back to the actual question – I guess that I would have struggled anyway as I'm lacking the years and miles of training. But we will never know whether a slower pace during biking would have resulted in me running faster and gaining back the time lost previously.

ST: Until 2010 you mostly did running. What got you inspired to do some TTs and triathlons?

Christoph: That's right Herbert! I had only been running for fun whenever I felt like running. I competed in some small races about 10k next to me whenever I liked to. (I started at the age of 17 and it got more and more) But there was a big problem: My legs were not strong enough for this overdose of running! I didn't run a lot of miles, but those ones were all-out, also in training. So I had a lot of injuries – which made running impossible for me. I was thinking hmm, what about buying a road bike? That was the first step. And the second one was that I had to do an entrance exam to study sport science, for which I had to learn to swim in the right way. I taught myself to swim freestyle via youtube videos. I'm not joking about that, we had no swimming education in school. This got the ball rolling and I combined the three different sports in a first short triathlon and I got addicted to it.

ST: Do you remember who was giving those freestyle lessons on youtube and did you send him or her a thank you note?

Christoph: Not really. After watching several videos at home, I went to the public pool and tried to remember the drills, which seemed very helpful to me! As you can imagine I wasn't really able to adapt most of them in the beginning, especially adapting to the right breathing technique was a tough job, but it became better and better. Regarding the feedback, maybe three or four of them got a like, but no real thank you notes.

ST: So what is next?

Christoph: Beautiful long runs in the marvelous landscapes of the South Eastern parts of Austria, biking and waiting for the snowfall to begin to do some cross-country skiing. But I guess you want to set up my plans for the next steps of my future career. As I have already mentioned, I'm going to start as a pro at the beginning of next year and in the long term I want to come back to Kona again – as an athlete naturally. My goal for the next season is learning. The initial schedule contains a lot of Ironman 70.3 races in Europe and maybe a late Ironman in November. I kind of expect to learn it the hard way. I guess a season without obvious victories is waiting for me, after such great achievements in the age group recently. But I'm really looking forward to it!

ST: How will you finance that learning year?

Christoph: That's a good question. I'm still looking for one or two sponsors, but basically my current ones support me in an amazing way. Without them my dream of Kona wouldn't have become a reality. I'm really grateful that they placed their trust in me.

ST: Is there anything else we should know?

Christoph: Haha, that would be a perfect place for an advertisement, but I think I already did so in my previous response. There's only one thing left to say, thank you for the really nice chat and thanks to all readers!