National Championship Triathlon

Bolivian olympic distance (1,5k-40k-10k) nationals were held on Friday April 3rd near the city of Tarija. The altitude there at the lake is about 1870m or 6,100ft. It's the best place in Bolivia for triathlons. There are not many good lakes at good altitudes in Bolivia, but Tarija's climate is very nice, and the race site is at the end of a quite quiet road and it was closed to the traffic. The run is completely flat. It's a paved pedestrian path that has no pedestrians. However, there were cows on the side of road and some on the road, and all competitors had to maneuver their way around them. They didn't move very fast, but one fast pig cased me to panic for some seconds during the race. In 2012 I won the nationals held in Tarija. Now I was not in quite as good shape and I knew it would not be easy to win again.
  I was shopping for flights only 2 days before I wanted to fly, and went to 3 different airlines' offices, but all of them were sold out. Because I didn't want to take the 17-18 hour bus trip, I still checked online, and found flights at a fair price.

  The elite categories were the only ones to compete that day; age groups from 7 years up would compete during the next two days.The swim was a non-wetsuit swim. I was in the water a couple hours before the start, and the top of the water was nice and warm, but just a little bit deeper it was cold. But it was ok, and the air temperature was around 28C or 83F at 1pm when the race started. I thought I swam pretty well, but there were two really fast swimmers who got a huge lead out of the water. After the swim I was fifth.

 In 2012 the bike was 4 laps, but now 8 laps out and back, which was not a good change. The two leaders were really far away, maybe 30 seconds apart, and during the first 3 laps I was not able to get any closer. I knew them and believed they were riding at least a little bit too hard, at least for each of them riding alone,so I kept my rhythm until I caught the 3rd place, and we rode together for over 2 laps (draft legal race) until he got tired. Slowly I could see the 1st and second place riders changing their faces and getting a little bit closer, and by the end of the bike I was about 3 and 1 minutes behind.

 I started the run quite fast to reach the 2nd, stayed with him for a while before going all out for about a 1km to drop him, while the leader was getting slower and slower. The run was 4 laps, and at the end of the 3rd one I got the lead and I didn't have to worry about losing it.

 I got really bad blisters on both feet. Should have taken the time to put on socks, because after 5k it was pretty difficult to run the second 5k with my feet hurting.
  I didn't have time to hang around much after the race, but had to ride back to the hotel, put my bike in the box and hurry to the airport. The return flight was first 40 minutes to Santa Cruz, then 35 minutes to Cochabamba, and finally 28 minutes to La Paz.