In May and June I was 2 months without running, and about 6 weeks without cycling or swimming. I just went to the mountains, but of course that helped to maintain some fitness. After that, training has been going quite well but mostly I've been doing just about 10 hours a week while now working 30hours a week. Once I managed 20 hours of training in 7 days.
On Sunday September 13th there was another Bolivian championships triathlon. A strange thing about triathlon here is that there are 3 nationals each year, and every time the distance is the same. Normal would be having a sprint, olympic distance, half distance and even full distance nationals. For example, in the Bolivian "elite" category the distance is always draft legal olympic distance 1500m- 40km- 10km but I think sometimes they make an exception and make it a sprint if there is an international sprint championships race coming up and the winner goes to the games.
Age groups here begin from 7 years old and there are some that are over 60 and compete. There is an "elite sprint" category for people 16-19 years old, and then there's another category for competitive 20-23 year olds who don't want to compete in the "elite olimpico" and I think that's on top of the age groups. Adults also have their own non- age group, non- elite, kind of in-between championship category "mayores".
Once again it would have been a 17-hour bus trip, so I flew to Santa Cruz the day before the race. Based on information I had before the race, I thought I was going to race at 7.30 in the morning but it turned out that it would be at 11 or 12, nobody really knew. In the morning I went to the race site early with the La Paz team. It was about 30 minutes from the hotel. I waited all day and finally our race started at 2.30. Everybody was really hungry beginning the race. The swim was in a 3-lane 50 meter outdoor pool (next to it was an indoor 25m pool). The pool was horribly cold. The coldest pool I have ever entered. Santa Cruz has a hot climate most of the year and it's quite close to sea level at 400m of elevation. We were lucky to have cool weather that weekend. I swam a 23.00 or 23.02. Pretty good for me (no flip turns allowed) but after so much training and living at around 3600m or 12,000ft I couldn't quite get everything out swimming fast close to sea level. Maybe should have just tried harder. But this time I was "only" 2.35 min behind the fastest swimmer. In transition I forgot my number hand lost 20-30 seconds going back to get it. Or I had thought it was not needed for the bike leg but some people told me to go get it so I did.
The bike course was 16 laps, each including two u-turns and 6 90 degree turns. It was also quite hilly so it was a really really slow course. The city of Santa Cruz is totally flat, but once you cross a river on the west side, it's hilly. Inevitably the two fastest swimmers got together, and I was told that soon they were a group of 5 together, because you couldn't get disqualified for getting lapped. I had company for about one lap but got no help so in reality I rode solo the whole time. Bike time was just about 1.08 and I was still 2 minutes behind, and in 3rd place. I ran really well and passed 2nd place after 1.5km but it took almost until km 9 till I was with the leader. I tried to drop him but it didn't work, so then we took it easy for about 1km. In the last, long hill we sprinted, then sprinted a slight downhill to the finish line and in the end I lost by 1 or 2 seconds. I think it has been 9 years since I've had so much lactic acid in my legs running. I forgot to stop my watch but run time was about 39 for the hilly course that totaled 10.3km and the last km was slow except the end. Finish time was 2h.13 minutes. Overall I'm in the best shape since end of 2013 so I think I'll keep training.
I lost my return flight by 4 hours but only had to pay about 17 dollars to take the last flight of the day. Very nice.
