Fast Triathlon Victory!!

Buzios beach, Rio de Janeiro hosted the Fast Triathlon last Sunday, the biggest TV station in Brazil broadcast the competition live.
This triathlon is made for TV, and it is a team race (6 countries with 3 athletes on each team). 

We raced 250m swim, 4km bike and 1.2km run, with 15min in between; three times!

As the distance is short, the speed is fast, and the race is really intense!!

When we are lining up for the start, our arms and legs still hurting from the previous round!!

In the first round, I finished third, behind Alarza from Spain, and Buckingham from England. Brazil, also represented by Wesley Matos and Danilo Pimentel, trailed the Spanish by 9 points and the English by 4.

Although we saw the likelihood of winning the race unlikely, we were willing to do whatever it took to accomplish that goal! On the second round, I broke away on the bike, and held that nice gap during the run portion, taking the win!!
We passed the British team, but the Spanish held onto the lead by 7 points...

The third round started well with the 3 Brazilians exiting the water first, but soon we became a peloton of Brazilians, Spanish, English and Colombians. A strategy started to take form. We wanted a double Brazilian win. Wesley was able to build a nice gap on the bike. But each time I tried to break away, the opposing teams worked well to stay with me. So I worked to hold back the big pack!


As we went into the run, I wasn't sure if we could take the win, but then noticed a Brazilian running ahead of each Spaniard. In the end, Wesley won; I got seventh place; and I knew we had gained some points over the Spanish team; I just didn't know if it would be enough...


By one point we won it!!! Uhuuuuuuuu!! :-D

Final results:

1 - Brazil: 111 points
2 - Spain: 110 points
3 - Great Britain: 98 points
4 - Colômbia: 59 points
5 - Chile: 24 points
6 - South Africa: 19 points

As I did last year, I put my race suit up for auction to raise money for a worthy instituition named "Fazenda da Esperança" or in English "Farm of Hope" for the treatment of chemical dependency... The website is in portuguese but if interested, you can send me your offer by email ,(maurocavanha@hotmail.com) before February 22th.
Cheers!

1st place at Fiss International Triathlon!!

A picture is worth more than a 1000 words!! 

I have to confess that I was getting used to posts filled by reflections trying to explain to myself why the race did not go as expected...

Life is made of ups and downs, so I knew that eventually everything would come together and the result would be great!!

The race happened at San Cristóbal - Venezuela, Saturday at 3:00 pm. 

I started with a good  mile swim, but left the water with a 30 sec gap behind the leaders. On the 24 mile bike ride, I overtook the leaders and it was my turn to open a 30 sec gap on them!!

During the 6 mile run, I pushed as hard as I could, without looking back!! It felt amazing!!

I set a new course record of 1:54:20! 

With 5kg lost weight and an improvement of 6% on my VO2 capacity, I have come to understand that the Brazilian National Federation made the right decision for themselves by taking me out from the Olympic trials! It would not look good for them if someone who do not receive any support (out of the 1.4 million dollars which the Olympic Committee gives to the Triathlon Federation), should win a Olympic spot...

Afterwards I was invited to a very cool interview at TRT channel!! 

The organizer, Mario, also scheduled me with a bunch of radio stations. Suddenly I was listening live on the radio to my Spanish accent!! Doing an interview is not an easy thing! Can you imagine how much more difficult it is when it isn't your first language!! lol