For most athletes, the aging process wears on them and injuries begin to pile up that eventually takes them away from the game.

This past October, Frewsburg resident Mindy Lawson-Crabtree and Randolph resident Robert Aucoin showed they are not like most athletes when they represented Team USA at the 2025 World Triathlon Age-Group Aquabike Championships in Wollongong, Australia.

Aucoin competed among the 40-44 Men, finishing the 41.5-kilometer race in 2:23:40, finishing 25th in the world for his age group. He completed the 1.5-kilometer swim in 26:11 and ended the final 40 kilometers on the bike in a time of 1:41:58.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Aucoin stated. “It’s a great opportunity to be a part of Team USA and a good reason to go there too.”

Aucoin and Crabtree-Lawson take part in the parade of nations at the 2025 World Triathlon Championships in Wollongong, Australia. Submitted photo

Lawson-Crabtree, competing with the 50-54 females, cracked the top 10 in the world for her age group with a blistering time of 1:43.56. She was less than 10 minutes behind world champion Kim Taylor of New Zealand, who completed the event in 1:38:16.

Lawson-Crabtree competed the same distance as Aucoin, finishing the swim in 29:27 and then the bike portion in 1:11:32.

“First and foremost, I just wanted to go to Australia,” Lawson-Crabtree said. “Doing the competition was a huge bonus for sure. You have to qualify to go to the event and that’s an honor to qualify and be a part of USA Triathlon.”

Training together out of Mindy Lawson-Crabtree Coaching, the pair are no strangers to long distance competitions such as Ironmans and triathlons.

However, over the past few years, their bodies have begun to betray them, making competing in the sport that they love difficult or even impossible to do.

Robert Aucoin and Mindy Lawson-Crabtree pose with American flags with the Tasmanian Sea in the background at the 2025 World Triathlon Championships in Wollongong, Australia. Submitted photo

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For Lawson-Crabtree, traveling to Australia was not the first time she has competed on the world stage with previous experience representing Team USA in Pontevedra, Spain, at the 2023 World Triathlon Age-Group Championships.

She wrapped up quite an impressive campaign that year with the triathlon trifecta in Kona, Hawaii competing in the 2023 Women’s Vinfast Ironman 140.6 World Championship, but right around the corner would be another roadblock after persevering all year.

Just a couple of months after competing in Kona, Lawson-Crabtree had an operation on her left medial meniscus root repair on Jan. 30, 2024.

“After that whole series of events I started to have horrific pain in my left knee,” Lawson-Crabtree stated. “That led me to have a medial meniscus repair because the root of the meniscus uplifted off of the tibia. I had surgery that next year after I did all of those events and it took me a good six months to rehab back. I was told that I shouldn’t run anymore at all because the knee is so arthritic with no cartilage left behind the kneecap and the meniscus shredded terribly. I didn’t really want to listen to that, but I started to try and do some running … when I was starting to try to run I was having pain in my other leg.”

Aucoin competes in the bicycle portion of the aquabike competition. Submitted photo

Lawson-Crabtree then knew that her other knee was starting to go and several ailments began piling up on her.

As if the knees were not enough, Lawson-Crabtree began to have lumbar issues and was diagnosed in August of last year, requiring decompression treatment for lumbar spine.

“After that it got really, really bad,” Lawson-Crabtree stated. “I could barely drive, I could barely walk, I was dragging myself into work. … The surgeon, she proposed quite a major back surgery — I don’t have a disc anymore, they disintegrated between L4-5, disc levels above and below were herniated with a bunch of arthritis — she proposed a huge surgery with a cage, removing discs with about 24 weeks of coming back to function after surgery. I didn’t want to do that, so I didn’t.”

That whole time Lawson-Crabtree was battling through the pain attempting to come back and she discovered that the pain was not too awful when she was swimming or biking. She did attempt to run again because she said “I’m crazy,” but after that she decided to go to decompression therapy and that is what has been keeping her going well.

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Aucoin’s injuries date back to the fall of 2022 when training for the 140.6 Ironman in Cozumel, Mexico.

While running a half marathon in October of that year, Aucoin began noticing numbness in his left foot and a minor pain in the lower leg afterwards. He powered through and made it to the Ironman in Mexico, but after completing the swimming portion he withdrew from the event with severe pain in his left leg.

“The training leading up to that I started having some weird issues,” Aucoin said about his injuries arising. “My left leg was going numb, I got most of that race done, the swim and a portion of the bike, but my whole left leg was going numb so I pulled out down there.”

Aucoin was eventually diagnosed with external iliac endofibrosis in December of 2022 and then underwent a bypass of the artery in January.

“I had testing done on the blood flow to my legs,” Aucoin added. “From cycling and the repetitive motion, the exterior iliac artery going down my leg was crushed and the scar tissue cut off the blood supply to a portion of my leg.”

After healing, he then went to compete at the U.S. Triathlon Nationals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and did okay by his standard, but that wasn’t the end for him.

It turned out that the bypass operation he had only bought him another year before it failed and then the same issues began arising in the right leg, making it very difficult to get through competitions. This brought him to a conundrum of continuing competing and playing through the pain or giving it up, but with the go ahead from his surgeon he made the choice to push on.

“The surgeon said I’m not going to hurt myself any more,” Aucoin said. “So I kept training and that’s why I started racing aquabike since I couldn’t run as well as I used to.”

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Most people would probably hang it up after going through what Lawson-Crabtree and Aucoin have over the past couple of years, but they are not like most people.

The biggest strain on their athletic endeavors arose in the running portion of the triathlon with the new injuries making it virtually impossible to continue long-distance running.

Lucky for them, there is an alternative to giving up the sport they love with the adaptation of the aquabike event.

“From Pontevedre to this event (Australia), I transitioned to doing aquabike,” Lawson-Crabtree stated. “Because of all the medical stuff going on in my body. It was a huge comeback because I had no strength in my left leg and I had to work diligently to get power and strength to pedal my bike. It took me six months to get the equal power in my left leg and right leg with the biking.”

That did not mean it was not difficult for both Lawson-Crabtree and Aucoin to move on from traditional triathlon or marathons, rather it just provided an avenue in with the duo could scratch the ultra-competitive itch.

“It was hugely rewarding,” Lawson-Crabtree said about returning to elite competition. “At first I had to accept I was going to be an aquabiker and not into triathlon. Being able to first qualify for Worlds in my first year coming back from all of that.”

Then once further down the road to recovery, competing at the highest level in the world was once again an option, bringing the pair to Wollongong, Australia this past October.

“I did some local races,” Aucoin said after his return from injury. “The times qualifying for that ranked me for the U.S. National Team.”

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While both Lawson-Crabtree and Aucoin train locally together, it marked the first time the pair traveled away from the continent to compete together as they both embarked on a new challenge with aquabike.

“I was super psyched to have Rob go,” Lawson-Crabtree said about the pair at Worlds. “I went by myself before, so to have him it was great. … At the finish line was very rewarding. We’ve been friends for a very long time and trained together for a long time, he is my swim idol as a very gifted swimmer. For me it was just very cool to have him there.”

For Lawson-Crabtree, she was able to finish higher among the fellow aquabike competitors than she did in the larger triathlon field in Pontevedre, while Aucoin was able to get his first taste of the World Championships.

“I wasn’t going to go to Worlds if I’m not at a certain level, that’s just my mindset,” Lawson-Crabtree said about going to Australia. “I think I was sixth in the ranking for the age group according to races that I did. It was really rewarding that I went to Australia and ended up being the second-place American. It really fueled a comeback somehow, that my body allowed me. I feel very blessed.”

“I have the same issue going on in both legs,” Aucoin added. “I wasn’t expecting to do super well at a World Championship, but it was an opportunity to go and compete with the best.”

Regardless of the results, Lawson-Crabtree and Aucoin persevered through so much over the past few years that they were able to relish in the success they both earned.

“Just getting a taste of competition, for me, it’s a way of life,” Lawson-Crabtree said about the comeback. “Honestly, the whole running bit was extremely devastating. I feel like there is kind of a chemical addiction, the endorphins and that. Running had been a spiritual thing for me and shaped a lot of my life. It brought me self-esteem and a sense of belonging, I was just very much addicted to running and loved it and I still do. I still am running, a bit, I shouldn’t be, but I do, on soft surfaces. I’m not race running, but I dream of it, but aquabike fills a void a bit. It allows a focus, an exercise that as far as my knee and back swimming is really good for it and doing nothing is not an option.”

It may not be set in stone which competition is next for either of them, but for the two “broken people” there will always be a next race.