La Paz
If I had an Argentine Peso for every time someone said to me, “You have to race in La Paz sometime in your life. It’s an awesome experience,” I would be able to afford my weight in empanadas de carne from the rotiseria on the corner of Chacabuco and San Martin, right next to my homestay’s house in La Paz. However, I don’t think I could stomach another empanada considering the way I reacted to the last one I ate before boarding my flight from Buenos Aires to Washington-Dulles. Many thanks to the crew aboard United flight 846 for being lightening fast with the airsick bags and for the spare pair of socks. I’m sorry about the carpet in the aft galley. I’m sure that will come right out.
Anyway, I finally got to race in La Paz this past weekend being that it served as the 2012 Pan American Championship and thus was very important for the Olympic qualifying process. The race lived up to the hype. Triathlon is HUGE in La Paz. During my training in the days leading up to the race I got tons of cheers from bystanders or cars driving by. “¡Dale dale!” they yelled. I got into countless conversations with various La Paz citizens about my Cervelo S3. “¿Es de ruta or contrareloj?” (road or time trial?). “Tu Castellano es muy bárbaro,” one man said. I’m still not sure exactly what this means but he looked like Jack Sparrow so it was an amusing conversation nonetheless.
The race itself was just like any other ITU race but with a few eccentricities. Like the violent, ear-shattering fireworks that the locals kept shooting off. Or the swim start where we all dove in and immediately turned left (because that’s fair, right?). I was number 17 on the pontoon and as logic would have it I ended up 17th in a long line of swimmers down the Río Paraná. I survived the downsteam-upstream-downstream swim and ended up in the first chase pack. We caught the front pack within five kilometers and I rode the rest of the time at or near the front – so much easier up there! My incredible good luck in avoiding crashes that happen right in front of me continued in La Paz when a Guatemalan went down and sent one of the orange gas cans (used to divide the out-and-back portion of the bike course) into my front wheel. It bounced off harmlessly. “Nice save, Kev!” I heard Barrett Brandon yell behind me. As I ran down the final straightaway it was like a Tour de France mountain stage as the burgeoning crowd left only enough room for one runner. I politely pushed a Brazilian athlete to the side so I could pass him in the last few meters. I closed the last three kilometers of the run strong but it didn’t matter as my first seven took nearly 30 minutes. I suffered from the same side stitch/breathing cramps that plagued me in Kelowna, Buffalo and Huatulco. This is incredibly frustrating to say the least and I need to find a solution if I am to race effectively.
Due to similar lackluster performances from other American men in La Paz I remain eighth American in terms of the selection process for Olympic Trials in San Diego in May. The door is not closed completely. Ice cream and hip hop dancers in la plaza concluded the La Paz Triathlon weekend – definitely an experience!
About to enjoy a desayuno completo with LJ.
Discussing tactics with Barrett. “Let’s make the front pack.” “Yeah, OK.”
Boats took us to the swim start.
Suffering on the run.
Guatape
Who knew that doing climbing repeats of El Peñón before the race would ruin my taper?! Kidding…I just had a horrific race. Let’s not talk about it. Time to look forward to 2012. El Peñón did provide for a nice post-race cool down workout, though:
National Champs
On to the next one: I’m gearing up for the Huatulco ITU World Cup this weekend, my first WC since March. A wise man once said: “If one is to race in Mexico one must embrace Mexico…”
Kelowna
When a double Olympic medalist tells you “the plan” it’s best to pay attention.
“Hey Kev, we’re going to cut right immediately – don’t swim on anyone’s hips, just get on feet. We’re going to string this swim out.” So that’s what we did – we cut right and I found myself on Simon’s feet. Some fast swimmers came from the left, we met at the first buoy, and we were away. I was part of a small group of about ten athletes that came out of the water 90 seconds up on a big group. I was dangling at the back of the swim pack so I scurried into the group on the bike and by the time we got to the top of the “climb” on the first of six laps we were a select group of seven. Awesome, I made the swim breakaway!
Our group worked fairly well together and held a 75 to 80 second lead on the chasers for nearly the entire ride. Simon and Kyle were marking each other and everyone else in the pack seemed content to stay in the group. I considered attacking but decided against it. Bad decision! On the final lap of the bike our group was given a time gap of 80 seconds to the chase pack. I decided to stay in the group and run on fresh legs. We cruised into T2, racked our bikes and put on our running shoes. I was dismayed by what I saw next: the chase pack coming into T2 no more than 15 seconds back! Apparently the combination of an attack out of the chase pack combined with our lazy Sunday stroll in T2 caused the gap to close down rapidly.
“No worries, I can run,” I thought. Not today! I ran with Simon and Kyle Jones for about 2K before starting to suffer from a diaphragm cramp. It got worse and worse and I rocketed back to eighth place – a disappointing result for sure, made worse by the fact that I set myself up so well with a good swim/bike.
Next up: Vegas 70.3!
San Fran (In July)
On the podium in San Fran with (left to right) Tenille Hoogland, myself, Simon Whitfield, Alexis Smith, Lindsey Jerdonek, Andrew McCartney, and a whole lot of sparkling apple cider!
I feel like I just posted about this race not too long ago. Oh wait, I did – this race is usually in November. This year, though, the race was moved to July and things were a bit different – the water was warmer, it was sunny during the race, and I showed up a lot fitter!
Dustin McLarty destroyed the swim (he came out of the water over one minute ahead of me apparently swimming ‘warm up speed’). I bungled T1 – as I exited the water I took off both my wetsuit AND race suit (not all the way, just to my waist thankfully!). I only lost a few seconds, though. Out onto the bike I found myself in the chase pack and rode 40K at a leisurely Sunday stroll pace except for a couple of unsuccessful attacks (frustrating). I came into T2 2:40 down and ran the fastest 10K of the day (Simon shut it down with a 2+ minute lead) to end up in third place. Not bad!
Overall it was a good weekend. San Fran was fun, it was great to meet Simon Whitfield, my homestay was awesome (thanks John and Lindsay!), and of course the annual Cal Berkeley tri team post race festivities were entertaining to say the least.
Now it’s time to go practice taking my wetsuit off.
