First triathlon since November 2013

This past weekend there was a triathlon here in La Paz. It was a regional championship race, an ITU- distance sprint 750m swim, 20km bike and 5km run. The swim was a pool swim in a really nice 50 meter pool at an an altitude of about 3450m/11,300ft. That's over 400 meters lower than where I live and mostly train, and I could feel the difference. The bike was 8 laps and run was 2 laps on a course with plenty of curves, and a u-turn at both ends. The first half of the lap was very easy and mostly downhill, and then the second half was hard going up. People watching the competition could see the racers two times each lap, which was nice too.
  My race was supposed to start at about 12.15, and I think it was about 1pm when it finally started. Not bad for Bolivia. I was glad we didn't race at 8am when it's cold outside. There were three others on my lane and they were younger and two of them quite slow. I don't think I was able to push as hard in the swim as I wanted, and while getting out of the pool I was told there were three people ahead of me. It was warm and sunny outside, and I didn't notice any wind that day. The leader during the first lap was really far ahead, maybe 1.5 minutes. He was an Argentinian. I don't even remember passing the two others because I was focused on going really hard and chasing the leader. After 4.5 laps I reached him, and for two minutes we took it easy and chatted. He was visiting from the city of Salta which is at moderate altitude, but really not much compared to La Paz. Some people were cheering for me, and as the race progressed, more and more people learned my name from them and the support was really good! Apparently they wanted me to beat the Argentinian. Also, just before the race when there is the speech (I can't remember how it's called) I was officially "welcomed back to Bolivia" hehe.
 I accelerated two times in an uphill and dropped my competitor (it was a draft legal race). During the last three laps I kept going pretty hard, and had a pretty good lead when the run started. It was around 1 minute, or close at least.
  The run went really well too, a lot better than I expected, just like cycling. Nice cruising. The Argentinian didn't run very fast, and I couldn't keep track of others because there were so many people on different laps.I was given a 15 second penalty for having left something on the ground in the first transition, so I had to stop 50 meters before the finish line. This was my second triathlon ever in Bolivia, second win, and both times were a first triathlon after about 1.5 years of not competing. There is a good triathlete in La Paz who has won several national championships, but didn't compete now. There have been no results available though, which is a real problem here. After the race I rode 42 minutes uphill to get home. Then in the evening I went back in a car to participate in the awards ceremony.

Cycling race

On March 15th there was a cycling race in El Alto, at over 4000 meters/ 13,100ft. It was a version of a criterium: 20 laps on an out and back course, totaling about 45km/28miles. I had never raced a criterium before, but I assumed it was going to be harder than a regular road race, and I was right. After every turn there was a severe acceleration, racers trying to break the pack and drop people. After just 4 minutes I saw my heart rate reaching anaerobic levels and I was trying to hang on to the leaders at every turn. I knew there were a bunch of really good riders, but while suffering, I was sure that not many would last until the end. As the race wore on there were less and less people trying to be at the front. Many times a few riders broke away for maybe a minute or less, but didn't get away. Then at some point, I think just after the half way point, I didn't really even see 2 getting away because I was a few places back. They got far away, but after maybe 15 minutes one of them dropped the other and rode away solo, until the finish. I would have been impressed, but I was busy still chasing him taking turns with basically just one other racer, pulling 2-4 others behind us. Luckily those 2-4 were not being "smart" by not taking any pulls, but they were more like dying. At the last turn I was quick and had only one guy ahead of me, then I sprinted away for a moment, but soon the dude who was in the breakaway with the eventual winner but got dropped, easily passed me and kept that 5 meter lead until the finish. So I got 3rd overall. Pretty good. Cycling has been my priority but I'm running and swimming too. After the last turn I peaked 866 watts and averaged 398 watts for one minute. When doing a normal or an easy ride, the wattage is not so different from sea level, but when doing hard intervals, everything seems to be about 50-60 watts lower here at these crazy altitudes. It also looks like that when going hard, the heart rate is lower than at sea level. It's very different riding, running, and swimming here.

Charquini "attempt"

On Thursday, March 12th I wanted to climb a mountain named Charquini. It's almost 5400meters/17,700ft high. Like one week before, I drove to La Cumbre Pass, but it was snowing really hard. I had to stop driving for 10 minutes because I couldn't see anything. It was still dark, too. My plan was to follow the small dirt road that went higher than the pass, and closer to the mountain I was going to climb. I did that and it was the bumpiest drive ever. However, I was not able to drive as far as I wanted to, because when the path got steeper I kinda got stuck in the snow. I knew it would melt by the time I'd be back so I was not worried and started the walk. I moved really quickly for a little over an hour, going past the mountain I had climbed the week before. This time it was not completely cloudy or foggy, so I was able to see the mountains. I saw that there had been an avalanche very recently, most likely that morning:

Just like my last climb, I didn't have a very good idea of what it was going to be like, but I "knew" the mountain Charquini would have an easy glacier route and a more difficult and steeper route. I figured that the avalanche had happened on a quite similar, steep slope that I was going to climb. I also thought I wouldn't want to climb the easy route, so I decided not to climb that day. Maybe I would not have died, but anyway it looked like the probability of an avalanche was higher than most days because of the snow storm that morning. So instead, I got in a 3.5 hour trek at a decent heart rate, reaching over 5000 meters. After that, I put on my running shoes and did a 30 minute run at 4650 meters/15,250ft. 

Climbing Wila Manquilizani

On Thursday March 5th I did a smaller climb. The mountain is called Wila Manquilizani and it's the closest mountain with permanent snow/glacier from where I live. It is located in the La Cumbre area which I know "really well" because I have been riding mountain bike there a lot. It took about 35 minutes to drive up to the paved highway pass at 4650 meters/ 15,250ft. There is a small dirt road that goes higher, but I thought it wold be better to leave the car to a place where there is more traffic, and where tourists begin their mountain bike descent adventure down the Death Road. Anyway it's not very likely that anyone would be able to steal my car because I use a lock or a tool that makes it impossible to turn the steering wheel. And the gas tank has a lock too so that no one can siphon the gas out.
I walked up to a mountain ridge and tried to follow it as it got higher, but at some point it got too difficult and I decided to descent a few hundred meters. From there on it was really difficult to walk because the terrain was so rough and rocky. So, it took almost 3 hours to get to the base of the actual climb (snow) at 4990 meters/16,370ft. The snow was really wet and the visibility was really bad. In the picture the low end of the snow line is barely visible because the mountain was covered by fog and at times it was snowing. The last time I had seen the snow slope was in 2012 so I didn't have a very good idea how long the climb would be.

I started climbing the left side of the snow slope which limits to a rock face. I heard pieces of rock falling down from really high up, and moved a little bit to the right. It's pretty steep!

Looking up:

It took 1.5 hours to get to a point where it was not as steep, and I saw a little gully. After that there was a little mixed section up to a high point. My gps showed 5252 meters/17,230ft. I thought it was probably not the highest peak of the mountain, but being there without seeing much, I had no desire to look for a way to get higher on bad rock, or alternatively on questionable snow. I wanted to get down fast, but in the snow gully I took a little fall and slid down some meters. Thankfully it was just before the not-so-steep high part of the mountain face. After that I made the decision to down climb rest of the way down, really carefully, and it took 1.5 hours to get down. Once I cleared the terrible scree slope below the snow slope, it was a really neat walk back to the road on some interesting rock: