Rio 2016 Season!

This is the beginning of a new season, and maybe my last season as a profe, or better, a sacrifissional athlete, I mean, with no sponsors... 

In the next year, I will be completing 18 years of triathlon. Starting my adulthood in the sport, it will be time to review the idea of exclusive dedication, and maybe start a new career while I can still playing as an enthusiast athlete. 

(pic: mundotri.com)

Many stories, lessons, achievements and also frustrations, that Im sure magnified big time my life. I don't regret any step. Some were wrong and encouraged me to mellow out, many were right and also encouraging mellow!

As Paulo Coelho wrote in "The Alchemist", in the journey to reach the treasure of our dreams, we discover what treasures really are.

I will dedicate one more shot at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, but on this time there will be no frustration! At first, I never felt so close to be an Olympian, and second, is that my goal is to enjoy this journey and not only to be racing in Rio.  

It could seem that Im already resigned in case of defeat, but a really defeat would be not to take advantage of everything the sport has to offer. Im very optimistic that the results will come as a consequence of my efforts, and the main reason for my excitement is that I finaly figured out why in the past 4 years I had this "slow down" feeling, discovering that my thyroid was underactive (hypothyrodism), which I am planning to talk soon about it.

Yes, talk about it! Instead of mostly writting in here, I want to start posting more videos, I think it is a fun way of blogging, or vlogging (as video-blogs are called). Meanwhile I warmup the Cavanha's Entertainament Production du Brazil, LOL, I would like to hear suggestions of what to post or talk about! 

I will take advantage of this post to wish a new year plenty of strength (not luck) to reach all your goals (not dreams)!! ;)

Merry Christmas and a 2015 of Pure Life!! 

Catching up on the Blogosphere!!

Hello There!
Today I will summarize the last races, training and trips.

The blog ended up with a good delay, as I didn't want to rush any post. Instead I wanted to find the best pictures and describe every detail about my journey. But with so much traveling, pics and stories I was getting overwhelmed and demotivated to write about stuff that happened 3 months ago.
So today I wanna leave my blog up to date!

In the last post, Florencia, the Isuzu and I were arriving in LA, after racing in Las Vegas and in Pacific Grove. 

I ended up getting a cold and had an easy week, trying to recover myself to be racing again, this time was the LA Triathlon, which has actually happen in the city of Torrance. 

For sure one of the most challenging courses ever, and Im pretty sure that if they could, they would have us climbing in the swimming too! Lol

The race was a sprint (750m, 20km, 5km), and not only the ascents and descents on the whole course, but we also had half of the footrace over the soft sand of Redondo Beach, where soft was hard! 

(by Florencia Patat!)

I did a great race, I had no expectations and finished 6th, pretty happy with that, as I made the prize money cut! 

In the sequence I had to do another adjustment in the Isuzu. At this time the driver's window was stucked right open. Im seeing myself becoming a good mechanic pretty soon!! haha

We had a few more days enjoying LA, and it was really nice seeing friends, doing some workouts and showing this city I love to Florencia.  

In the last week we went to Hollywood, I drove also a Colombian friend who was visiting U.S. for the first time. Florencia was very excited about Hollywood and when we were just getting there the Isuzu couldn't keep up! Damn, it was smoking pretty hard, and I remember Florencia's scared face saying "OMG! FIRE! We should run, this thing is about to explode." haha Now its funny but I confess I was pretty concern too, I thought she had actually seen the fire!

Well, I parked the car and we all cooled down, the Isuzu was overheated. I decided to leave it there, so it could get cool while we could still visiting Hollywood. I was kinda glad the Isuzu had endured until then, we drove about 3.000 miles and this could have happened in so many worse situations. 

On the way back the car was cooled and the plan was to drive back stopping as many times we needed to avoid overheating again. I did it and we could drive back to my friend Bobby. And like that, I left the Isuzu in Los Angeles... That means more mechanic service awaiting for me in LA, I think this time I have to replace the thermostat. 

From LAX we flew to Cozumel, Mexico, where I raced a World Cup placing 62nd. And in the following week I placed 47th in another WC, this time in Catagena, Colombia. Both weren't the results I was aiming for, I didn't race well, didn't get any points in the World Ranking, didn't win any prize, and didn't had the media return I wanted. The only thing I didn't waste was the trip! :) We had been in such amazing places like the chichen-itza pyramid, a cool sinkhole, and got stuck on the mud only while visiting the Totumo volcano!!

Extending the Weekend!! #PacificGroveTri

A day after racing twice (qualifiers and finals) in Vegas, we hit the road again, driving practically the whole day to get to Monterey, central California. With a couple stops, it took us about 11 hours on the road.

The trip wasn't as beautiful as driving through Utah and Colorado like we did two weeks before, but it was really interesting seeing that number of different machines along the way, to explore nature's energy.

Arriving in the hotel, I first did some core workouts, trying to loose the muscles. Specially the core, that can get pretty stiff after long time sitting. After that, we could get some food and tried to relax, as I would be lining up again to race on the next day, Saturday.

This time it was an olympic distance race. The ocean was really cold, so most of us used a wetsuit. The race venue was really beautiful. I was sore but ended up in a good race, finishing the 51.5k in 2:01:41 and placing 7th.

Afterwards we explored a bit of Monterey Bay, we both really wished we had more time to spend in such a beautiful place. But I was really tired from so many races and we had a long drive ahead. In time though, we made some native cute friends before heading back to LA...

That was a long and delightful weekend. There was yet another triathlon happening at Malibu on that Sunday, and we almost did it! Nah, I wouldn't be racing, but I was planning to be by Florencia's side cheering friends on! Unfortunately, we both were so smashed from traveling, that we both got a flu and now I was running against the clock trying to heal before the LA Triathlon, to happen one week from that Sunday. (to come in the next post!)

LA, Las Vegas and the Super Spring Triathlon!

On the next days we hung out in Los Angeles, met dear friends and I could show a little bit of the city to Florencia. We also headed to Malibu Beach and The Getty Museum. (pics below). 

Los Angeles is one of my favorites cities to be, visit, workout, see friends and get a nice tan, as rain is something very unusual there! So we really had a blast, while I kept my workouts up to date and had run most of my favorite courses, getting ready for the next challenges. 10 days later, we were on the road again for another 290 miles in the Isuzu . . . 

Viva Las Vegas!!

Thursday, September 11th, the race was the Super Sprint Triathlon Grand Prix!

In a giant parking lot it was built a huge triathlon arena, with a 10 lanes, 25m swimming pool, and a 1k track circuit for bike and run.  

The qualifiers happened in the morning. It was 3 heats of 10 athletes, selected and divided by the World Triathlon ITU Ranking. My start was in the 3rd one, close to 11am, Vegas was almost 100°F baby!! Lol

The race had the distances of: 200m swim, 3k bike, 1k run, 200m swim, 3k bike and 1k run. Yep! The race had 5 transitions and it was praticaly two triathlons at once!! 

I had a bad first swim, and pushing all out for 23 minutes, my race was all about catching up. Placed 5th and qualified to the finals. So since them I was doing everything I could to recover as fast as possible. I would be lining up for another race at 7pm on that day!!

("final b" pics and with my coach Grant Holicky)

Still very sore, but it was time to warm up for another race! This time with a little extra distance, we did twice 300m swim, 5k bike and 2k run. I did a much better swim and the race was well fought with a big pack of contestants together. I finished 5th place again, feeling like I had raced for four times on that day!!

Entire results link

Link to the video of my race, filmed by Florencia . . . (Gracia amor!!)

Afterwards I was really done, and our night ended up just spending a couple hours in the casino of our hotel. A shame not taking more advantage of being in Las Vegas with Florencia, but on the next day morning we were on the road again heading Pacific Grove, to be told on the next post!!

Final Destination, Arriving in Los Angeles!

I knew it would be a hot day in Kingman, as we were in the middle of the Mojave desert, only about a 100 miles from Las Vegas. 

So I went for a bike ride relatively early in that morning, and the route was nothing less then the Mother Road, or the U.S. Route 66! 

One of the most famous, if not "the most" famous route in the world!

Historically, it was a very important way since it's construction in 1926, served as a major path for those who migrated west. The US 66 Route used to connect Chicago to Los Angeles, as in the following map.

I did a really small section of it and it was pretty cool to see some of the old buildings restored in that old fashion way. Not to forget that over that route was built the first motel and the first McDonald's of the world!

Also known as the Will Rogers Highway, the route 66 had it's apex on the fifties and sixties, where many movies have shown the young people driving their Cadillacs and Harleys towards the California sunny weather! (They didn't know how cool it would be driving an Isuzu!! hahaha)

The route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, becoming officially removed from the United States Highway System in 1985. Nowadays, as Historic Route 66, a few sections were adopted and maintained by several states, like this stretch at Kingman.

A nice part of my wkout was to ride very close to a huge train, I was getting excited to race against it, but on this time I held myself back! haha

Ciclismo: 37km - 1h22min

The Isuzu was in charge of the long stretch of the day, and we drove 320 miles to get to my friend Bobby's house. Who was really kind of hosting us during our stay in LA.

So with no lazyness we made the trip in about 6 hours, just stopping once to eat, and another time for fuel. We missed the Colorado and Utah's mountains, as this part of trip was very of monotonous, plus it was very hot. We knew we were getting in LA as we approched palm trees and a big jammed traffic!! hahaha

Reaching the end of our 1340 miles journey, passing through rain, deserts, mountains, parks and more parks, all the way with not stopping to workout!! Stated on the posts I did another 4.3 miles swimming, 71 miles biking and 13 miles running, no that bad for a recovering week!

On Monday the training routine went back to it normal volume, and soon I will be posting about the races that followed in the next weeks!

Click here to go to the first post of this trip from Boulder to LA!

Monument Valley - Kingman

In the morning I could have a better idea of where we were, as the area was explored by my running shoes and a camera!

Running: 10k - 42 min

The "Ratón" from yesterday was never seen again, and Florencia and I were delighted of being in that beautiful place, so we checked out the later we could, taking advantage of the confy cabin! 

Back in the Isuzu we decided to head straight to the Grand Canyon, seeing only by far the famous sculptures of the Monument Valley National Park.

During this drive we also have decided not to go through Las Vegas (originally in our plans), because we would go there anyway in a couple of weeks for a triathlon race. This choice saved us a day or two to get to our final destination, Los Angeles.

We had 177 miles to the Grand Canyon, but we didn't do it in a straight shot. On the way we streched legs at the Najavo National Monument, where indians used to live in this hole in the wall, literally! #veryinteresting!

Next stop was in Tuna City, where we filled the tanks, food or fuel respectively, before heading down to another sightseeing. On the top of the Little Colorado River, this was not a national or a state park, instead it was a Native American owned area, where they encourage visitors to leave donations as an entrance fee.

There is also a beautiful variety of native artcraft. Enchanted by the colors, Florencia got two bracelets. It was totally worth a 30 minutes stop!

A few more miles and we were there . . .  The Grand Canyon!

Just one pic say it all!! #Hugeness

The Grand Canyon was the #1 on our trip list. When we started the drive we weren't sure about doing the South or the North Rim. We ended up choosing the South one, as it has a much more convenient route.

We were worried about the crowd, and as everybody warned, it really had tons of people in there. But with an adventurous spirit, you can find some pretty empty and amazing spots to get great views and pics! 

Can't remmeber why, but we both got in a bad mood right after leaving the park! This was the most boring part of the trip... another 170 miles with no rest!

Late in the night we stopped to sleep in Kingman, close to the border with California.

Click here to go to our final day on this Journey . . . 

Still in Monument Valley . . .

Oh! I have forgotten to tell you about what have happened in that hotel we found in the middle of the night, somewhere at Monument Valley . . .

Desertic area and in the dark we found this mini city called Gouldings Lodge, everything is named the same: Goulding's Hotel, Goulding's Restaurant, Goulding's Gas Station, Goulding's Museum, Gouding's Souvenir Store, Goulding's Camping, Goulding's Tour, in the end it was only missing Gounding's Police Department! Lol

The recepcionist offered the most economic room at 130 dollars, and when we hesitated about leave, he offered a cabin for 80 bucks. We got it  right away!

We were celebrating in the Isuzu while following a truck that was showing us the way, as our Goulding's cabin was located 2 miles from the entrance. 

In a total darkness, we saw our room lighted only by the two vehicles lights. It seemed a small duplex, encircled by a metal fence my height and it was three foot raised, maybe to protect against coyotes!?  

Scary! We hesitated while still in the Isuzu, but it was so late, and it was so hard to find a hotel in that road, that we decided to take a look on the inside. 

I stepped in ahead and did a disappointment face. It was just to scare Florencia, as the room was awesome! It was not a duplex, but a whole unit, a big room for both of us, it had a huge living room with three couches and a big TV screen, besides big kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

Happy, we stayed, and made sure all windowns and doors were locked! 

Rooms explored, we prepared a fast snack on the kitchen, unpacked some stuff and I went to the bathroom ready for a relaxing shower. Suddenly Florencia screamed and I heard her fast steps into the bedroom. Damn! Chilled to the bone I threw my towel on the floor and put my shorts on as fast as I could.

The intruder was in the kitchen she screamed from the bed: UN RATÓN, UN RATÓN EN NUESTRA HABITACIÓN!!

It was so late, I called the front desk, just to calm Florencia down, I did the complain, and received two mouse traps that instead of cheese were filled with peanut butter! Flor was afraid to find myself trapped in there before the mouse! Lol We locked ourselves in the bedroom and Flor could only sleep after closing the gap under the door using a big towel...  

Next post then, we continue our trip until Kingman, AZ!!

Click here to go to the 5th day of our Journey . . . 

Moab - Monument Valley

In the early morning I discovered the best bike path ever!!

Very true! With no crossing roads, the path goes close to The Arches National Park and pass nearby the canions,  revealing fantastic views!

It was an easy workout, with only twice 10 minutes on a faster pace, just to stimulate legs a little bit.

Bike: 38km - 1h12min

On the GPS, there was no more swimming pools on the way until Los Angeles, so I hopped in the pool while in Moab, before getting behind the wheels again . . . 

The swim was really easy, so I focused on technic exercises. I also did some under water shots to have an idea of my stroke efficiency . . .  Lots to improve!! 

400y warm up, 4x100y drill, 200y kicking, 8x25y building, 4x100y drill, 400y pull, 4x100y aerobic @1'40", 200y warm down.

Swim: 2.600y - 50min 

With no monster training during this trip, the only scary stuff we saw, was at the Dinossaur museum at Blanding, UT!! Lol

It was very cool to see the exhibition, specially the idea generated by some fossils that would suggest dinossaurs had not scaly skin, but they were actually covered by feathers, like giant birds!

Back to the Isuzussaur, we kept in big steps towards the south. The next stop was another national park, it was actually the first national park of Utah, founded in 1908: The Natural Bridges National Monument.

It is featured by three natural bridges, carved by time by the action of the Colorado river. We did a hiking that took about 1 hour to the base of the first one, called Sipacu, named in Navajo's language, the indians who used to live in this area. The greatness of this rocks are impressive, and we took hours imagining the river action around this million years. It was the river who went down or the rocks that went up!?? Lol

Not far from there, it was time for the Isuzu to get into the trail again, and we went down Moki Dugway, a tiny rustic trail road with about 3 miles plenty of switch backs and amazing views.  

During the trip, we also saw two other formations:

Gooseneck State Park (imagine a river that has decided to make a turn!)

Shaped while it was a plain surface, the San Juan river, with no rush, molded by the years more than goose necks, one of the world's most famous meanders.

And the Mexican Hat (how come that rock ended up in that top!?)

Shaped by nature miracle, or it could be Medusa that seducted a Mexican fellow with his hat! Lol

With the sun close to the horizon, and fulfilled with awesomeness, we decided to go forward. We were too late to visit the "Monument Valley" (central right pic) so we left futher expeditions to the next day!

A little hard to find hotel in that county, we ended up almost on the Arizona's border, a few miles after the park, but still in that region called Monument Valley.

Click here to read more about this night at Monument  Valley . . . 

Grand Junction - Moab

Woke up early in the morning in Grand Junction, and started the day with a "Running & Shooting"!!

The city is very cool, with a great artistic look on the main streeth, and pretty mountains in the background, so it was really a pleasant run. I was forced to stop couple times to make sure I got a nice pic, like in the sculpture of a dinosaur riding a bike above!

Run: 10km - 45min

Breakfast in the hotel, time to relax a bit and read emails, before a quick stop to swim at Orchad Mesa Pool.

600m warm up, 3x200m drills, 200m kick, 400m pull, 10x100m @1'30" (building 1-3), 200m easy. 

Swim: 3km - 1hour
(Not to count the time in the trampolim!)

I was feeling very tired, was even thinking that Grand Junction could be like 10.000ft high, but afterwards checking in the map, I realized there was nothing wrong, just I was really smashed! Lol

Work done, time to hit the road!

We passed by Fruita, a very cute city, where we had burritos for lunch followed by a quick city tour drive.

Back to the road, for sure one of the most incredible ones we have drove. Always following the Colorado River, which carved in thousands of years, beautiful views in the mountains around. 

As fantastic, as tricky! As at one time we have decided to explore a way that says innofensively "Onion Creek". But later at Google Maps, we discover the real name of the road was "Rose Garden Hill Safari Route".

A super cool way! We drove through creeks and wear the Isuzu 4x4, it was pretty fun at the beginning but afterwards on a attempt to do the loop, we spent more than two hours, to find the way back. 

How nice it was to be in the pavement again! The Isuzu was already very colorful, from the red dust.

Past this adventure, we didn't want to explore anything anymore. Lol So we drove nonstop until Moab.

We got there before the sunset, so we decided to stretch the drive into "The Arches Nacional Park", another rocky wonder.

From the park we looked for a hotel and rested until next day.

Click here to go to the 4th day of our Journey...

Glenwood Springs - Grand Junction

What a great start to our trip!

In 2013, Glenwood Springs was named the most fun city in the US, so I knew we would not be losing time while there. 

Woke up early, and at breakfast I found many maps of cycling routes. A great ride is the 25 miles bike path between Glenwood and Aspen, the Rio Grande trail.  

But then I saw on the map this nice climb, 24 miles long, difficult level, with great views and right by my hotel. Perfect, I was ready for it! Got an extra protein bar in my pocket, and told Florencia that I could take a little longer than expected.

The beggining was really spectacular, with great panoramic views (pic in the left down corner), but  I didn't ride too long, before ending up with no outlet, and opening the map again, to find a comma in between numbers 2 and 4, so my climb became 10 times shorter (or 2,4 miles!). haha Disappointed I resumed the workout on the bike path getting close to some beautiful canyon views.

Bike: 24mi - 1h18min

Back to the hotel I met a couple who was ready to go for a bike tour. He was saying to the hotel staff: "We left the car in the hotel parking lot, is that ok!? We will ride for about 2 hours or 5 minutes, depends on the weather." So I saw how lucky I was to be done at that time, as before the fastest clock's hand could turn a loop, it came a pretty heavy rain, that lasted almost for an hour, flooding the hotel entrance. 

When finally the rain went away, we rushed to go to an amusement park located on the top of this mountain. We got there by tram over a beautiful view. And we headed first over a giant swing, just on the edge on that huge clif. In the last picture below you can see how much fun we had together!! Lol

After all that adrenaline of being pulled out of the mountain on the giant swing, we have also joined other stressless attractions and visited two caverns plenty of geology lessons and also nice fun tales. 

The problem came on the time to go away. The heavy rain came back and due to the lightening, the tram went out of work, so we had to wait on the cold of the rain, for almost one hour before getting an improvised bus to get us down to the base, where the Isuzu was waiting for us.

After that cold, nothing better than a hot springs swimming pool! And what if its a 405ft long swimming pool!? Amazing!!

Every swimmer knows how nice is to enter in a warm swimming pool (90°F), and just to enter! As after warming up in a few strokes, it gets terrible hot. But on that day, I had just an easy one, so it was all  very nice!!

Swim: 1600y - 25min

Back in the Isuzu, heading West, we didn't drive that far, until getting into the Colorado National Monument, with no words to describe such amazingness, here follows some shots . . . 

The National Park is located near Grand Junction, and has about 24 miles on a curvy road that crosses it, almost reaching the nearby city, Fruita.

There is more than 10 panoramic view points, with many hike options. We got there by the end of the day and had to rush to drive through all the roadway.

This was one of the best parks in our trip, and we both wished we have had more time to explore it, I would say you wanna spend like 4-5 hours on this park.

On the dark, and already tired, we came back to Grand Junction and found a pretty good hotel, also economic, right in downtown, Historic Melrose Hotel, if by chance you are passing by!

Click here to go to the 3rd day of our Journey...

From Boulder to Los Angeles!

After a big and great block of training with the Apex crew, it was time to drive back to LA. Florencia came to visit me for a few days in Boulder, and has joined me on the trip back to California.

Boulder is the perfect city for training, at least in the summer! And so on, even Florencia did a couple workouts at the gym and went walking on a few trails where I was running. It is a tiny city, but with lots to do its impossible to get bored, in the picture above we are in downtown at Pearl St.

The trip straight away could be done in 17 hours, but driving from Colo to Cali, is like reading "The Alquimist", from Paulo Coelho: You can do it in one day, but you can also go really deep, and it can take several days, if not weeks!

Due to my racing season, I couldn't spend more than a week, so we loaded the car with most of belongings, and shortly we were driving an itinerant residence. Felt a lot like a homeless, but instead of a shopping cart I had my whole stuff in the Isuzu! Including my bike, which I would often take away for training.

The idea was to travel with no rush, we had plans "a", "b" and "c". It would all depend on our will to stay a little longer, explore, or just hit the road.

The result was 1.345mi in six days, and we stopped over: Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Moab, Monument Valley and Kingman. Along the way we decided to not go through Las Vegas, as I would be racing there soon, so there was a second trip coming soon!

I think we were very lucky with all the hotels, stops, and attractions, they were all very nice, plus I didn`t miss one day of training, and while I was working out, Flor was dedicated writing her thesis to conclude a Tourism degree back in Argentina. 

The Isuzu couldn`t fit better in this trip, specially crossing the Mojave desert and when getting lost at La Sal Mountains, luckly the 4x4 was up to date! 

More than 2000 pictures and several hours of video! I will be editing and posting piece by piece of our adventure crossing the West side of US!

Click here to the 2nd day of our Journey!