On the weekend of October 6-7 there was an interesting triathlon here in La Paz, organized by Club de Tenis La Paz. They also organized the olympic distance triathlon at lake Titicaca in March. This was the first time this race was put up. It featured a 1000 meter swim in an outdoor pool on Friday night when it was already dark. Pretty nice. The pool is a 25 meter pool in a garden-like setting, and there is also an indoor pool of the same lenght. The club is at 3250 meters elevation, which is over 600 meters less than where I live, so swimming felt "easy". There were maybe 40 participants, and four different swim starts. 2 swimmers per lane. The water was not cold, but the night was chilly and we were free to use wetsuits. I think my swim heat started at about 8.30pm and I managed a time of 14.32 which was surprisingly fast since I had been swimming very little. It was 2nd fastest of the night and I was one minute behind the leader.

The next morning at 8 we started cycling. In the past weeks and months I have finally focused on training instead of wanting to be at 100% for every possible race. In training I have done more hours and hard sessions have also been longer. During the race week I did 4,5 hours of cycling on Wednesday and 3:25 on Thursday. The bike was a mass start, even though it would have been nice to  leave one by one in the order of swim times. The triathlon was named Triatlon Xterra Hampaturi, and the cycling route was about one third pavement, one third stoned streets (very bumpy, much worse than cobbles), and then dirt roads. The course started from 3300 meters elevation (10,800ft) and climbed up to 3830 meters at transition. First two guys took off very fast, and it took me maybe 15 minutes to take the lead. I rode really hard the whole time and I am sure it was a much harder effort than in a typical on-road triathlon. Running shoes arrived at the transition in a bus. Before the start I said to a buddy that hopefully the bus arrives at transition before us. I got to the transition first, and about 20 seconds before the bus... luckily my rival was not in sight. Cycling took 47 minutes. I'm not sure about the distance but it was supposed to be 12 km.

Run started well despite riding hard. Legs felt light. This was a 6 km course, with the first 4 km rising slightly while there were also some downhills. After the first 2 kilometers there were no more houses and no people or traffic along the route. Then the little road got steeper, and the last 2 kilometers included as much as 250 meters elevation gain! The last kilometer was the steepest and I was only barely able to run. This was very hard, and the finish line was by the Hampaturi dam at 4245 meters elevation (13,927 feet). Run time was 38 minutes and I was a little bit surprised to finish 5 minutes ahead of the second place, so I won by four minutes overall. They gave me a watch that works like a smartphone. I haven't explored it much yet, but at least it works really well when calling from one room to another inside the house.

The next weekend on Sunday there was a race from outside El Alto to the legendary Chacaltaya mountain. This too was a mountain bike race but on dirt roads. We started from 4300 meters (14,100ft) and the finish was at 5220 meters (17,125ft)! It's not likely that there is another race in the world that reaches such elevation, so this should be the highest cycling race in the world. This race attracted some racers from other regions too, or at least I had never heard of a few fast riders that were there. I must say that doing competive endurance sports at 5000 meters is quite hard : )

Foto: Joel Zarate Alanz

 It snowed part of the way up but luckily the worst of that day's storm was further away. I finished in 1 hour 30 minutes and got 9th overall. It sure looked like for many racers their altitude genes kicked in since I could not keep up with some guys I typically beat. Or maybe it was because I had already been riding for an hour and 55 minutes before the start.

Today on October 22 I participated in my favorite local bike race. It's a road bike uphill race from 3760 up to 4660 meters (15,288ft). So this might be the highest road bike race in the world, while it does have categories for mountain bikes as well. The last time this was done was in June. I got second that time, but I had just recovered from bronchitis and was suffering from a stomach bug that bothered me for a few weeks until I finally took antibiotics for it. I like this race because I just need to roll downhill for 4 minutes from where I live to get to the start, and from the top of the mountain it's a breeze to get back home. This is also the road I train on the most when I ride outside. Also it's a lot like time trial and takes one hour or more, depending on the wind. This time the wind was a headwind while going up and my time was 1.04:50. I had a good day despite having ridden the indoor trainer 4 hours 20 minutes on Thursday (and 3 hours 40 minutes total on Wednesday) and pushed my record watts for the route. I got second overall out of 42. On the way down I hit 88,6 km/h (55 mph). It don't get no better than that!

Foto: Anniel Pelaez