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.
PATCO Champs
All I can say after racing in this past weekend’s PATCO Championship is thank goodness for ‘test’ events!! The race effectively served as a test for next year’s Pan Am Games (Guadalajara 2011). As major games go Pan Am Games is second only to the Olympics in terms of importance and prestige. As such, I expected a finely tuned, safe and fair course awaiting me in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This was not the case.
What did await us was a bike course featuring unpaved gravel sections, dangerous cobbles (so big and non-uniform that you couldn’t stay sitting or pedal while riding over them), small out and back sections with small, round metal speed bumps, all in addition to the normal poorly paved roads typical of Mexican races. Needless to say I was worried about the course but took solace in knowing that everyone had to deal with the same conditions. I was happy to learn later on that the ITU technical director Greg Peters was not going to allow this course to stand as-is. Thank goodness!
I stayed at an all inclusive resort called the Crown Paradise that will serve as the athlete’s village next year for triathlon, open water swimming, beach volleyball and a few other sports that can’t take place in Guadalajara. I’m not sure the staff at the hotel fully understood why all of us triathletes were there, or why we kept refusing their offers for tequila and margaritas in the days leading up to the race. We were certainly not the typical middle aged Americans they are used to waiting on. Confusing them even more was our sudden change of heart Sunday evening regarding their offers of tequila based beverages…
Anyways, race day finally arrived and the race organizers decided on which course we would be racing on. Option “A” was the final decision – this was the course that included a technical route through the transition area each lap. The ITU technical directors had been up literally all night filling in the dangerous cobbles with sand, helping the Mexican construction crews pave over the gravel sections and generally making the course ‘race ready.’ In the end the course was good, maybe even excellent compared to other Mexican races.
The race was hot. The water was approaching 87F, and the air was ~95F and humid when the race started at 2:15pm. A break happened on the swim that I missed and four of the original nine escapees stayed away on the bike – Matt Chrabot, Cam Dye, Luciano Farias (ARG), and Michel Gonzalez (CUB). I ended up in a large second pack that was completely disorganized and the 20 seconds we lost on the swim turned into 2:15 by the end of the bike. Matt Chrabot won from the breakaway. I ran third fastest on the day, catching everyone in the break except Matt to cross the line in fifth. It definitely stings a little to miss a swim breakaway but I’m very happy with my run effort and that nearly made up for missing the break. I scored a massive amount of both ITU and Olympic points so I ended the 2010 ITU season on a high note and set myself up well for next year. That’s what I set out to do in Puerto Vallarta so I’m happy!
So the ‘test’ event went off with only a few small shortcomings that the race organizers now have 365 days to fix! Of course this means the problems will remain problems for 362 more days and will be fixed in the three days leading up to Pan Am Games, but at least they will be fixed!
Next up Clearwater!!
Pre-PATCO Champs
My last ITU race of the 2010 season is coming up this weekend with the PATCO Pan American Championship in Puerto Vallarta. I’m especially excited to race since it is a preview of next year’s Pan Am Games course, but not so excited to go to the country of Mexico. It could have been worse: had I also raced in this past weekend’s Huatulco World Cup it would have meant a massive 11 days in Mexico instead of my currently scheduled three day stay. It was sort of a gamble to skip Huatulco in terms of ranking points, but hopefully training/resting for PATCO champs will pay off.
Things are pretty quiet around the OTC lately as nearly everyone is racing in either Huatulco or Kona, or leaving to race in South Korea next weekend. I’m the only resident athlete left! The lack of distractions actually makes for some great training – I miss the swim squad in the mornings but other than that I can’t complain. It’s a good thing I have a Netflix account, though.
To pass the time I went up to Boulder for a workout with my coach Bobby. It consisted of hard bike intervals on the Computrainer followed by hard run intervals through the neighborhood, all while overdressing to simulate the heat of Mexico. It was a great workout but very unpleasant.
Training since Budapest has been evenly split between ITU focus and 70.3 focus. I went up to Denver after returning from Tuscaloosa and Todd Carver of Retul checked up on my TT position. Since then at least half of my rides are on the Ordu getting ready for the 56 mile ride in Clearwater.
At this time next week I will be hanging up my road bike until 2011!
