La Paz - "La Ciudad de Triatlon"

 La Paz is a small town in the Entre Rios province of Argentina - about a 7 hour bus ride northeast from Buenos Aires. The town is full of natural beauty and culture. They host this race every year, with age group and youth races Saturday and the elite race on Sunday, and many of the locals told me it is the highlight of the year for the town. Everyone comes out to watch, drink, and cheer, and if they can't, it's live broadcasted on the television.

I was nervous to travel alone to South America, but clearly I've lived to tell the tale.  I was on an overnight flight from the US to Buenos Aires and then got on a neon "Rapido Tata" bus for the long haul to La Paz (picture included).  Side note - I learned the hard way that on buses and in many public restrooms you are supposed to bring your own toilet paper. 

So I finally made it to La Paz and was driven to my hotel which was super nice.  They even gave me an extra extension cord for all my American plugs.  There was a restaurant in the hotel with great food, including fresh caught fish from the river - my favorite.

It is the middle of the summer in Argentina, so it was very warm. The day before the race, I rode around trying to "get the lay of the land" and preview the courses.  I was also looking for a pool to swim in, and by the time I finally found it I was too hot to care that it was green.  The race briefing was later that night in a local church.  I had some trouble following all of what was going on during the meeting because everyone spoke really fast and the dialect is a little hard to understand at times.  The gist of the meeting was that some rules would be enforced, some wouldn't, but under no circumstances could anyone have a bare torso!!

My race was scheduled for 2pm.  I got to transition early and got in a little warm up swim with some of the girls.  Then we waited...and waited...and finally around 2 we did the whole athlete call-down and lined up for all the spectators. 

The river we swam in has a really strong current, so instead of doing a loop, they took us by boat some unknown distance upriver and then it was just a straight shot to T1 swimming with the current. The swim was weird. I took off and created a gap on the field right away.  There were no sight buoys, so I was just literally going with the flow.  Every now and then a whole boat-full would start wildly waving their arms - telling my to go in some indecipherable direction - so I ended up zigzagging all over the place! By the time I got into T1, there were 2 of the Argentinian girls coming out of the water and we grouped up early out on the bike course.

The bike course was 9 laps (to equal 40k) through the town with a short hill, a longer gradual hill, a few sharp corners, a 180, and a few speed bumps each lap. The three of us took turns at the front, putting more time onto the field. I was being pretty conservative on the bike, more so than I ever have, to be on the safe side since it was very hot and I wanted to get all my hydration in for the run. The two Argentinians worked together a few times (each at the same spot) to try to drop me, but I just sat close and it was no big deal. I was feeling confident going into the run that they had been expending much more energy than me on the bike.

The three of us ran out of T2 with the rest of the field was at least 3 min back at the point. The run course was 4 loops and a bit longer than usual. My first few steps running, I knew I was not normal. There was cramping in my diaphragm and stomach making it painful and hard to breathe for a little bit. This has happened once before, and I know to just back off a little, try to get control of breathing, and try to get down some water at the water stations. The two Argentinians had a sizeable gap on me after the first lap, when I started to feel a little better. I just ran as hard as my body would let me and when a cramp would start to come on, just back off a little until it passed. It made for a pretty disheartening run, it's never fun to feel like you can't control your body! The crowd was in my face the whole time "vale vale! " "la tenia!"which was cool but also felt very far away from my brain at the time.

Some of the local kids hanging out outside of my hotel.

I had really wanted to win, so I was a little bit disappointed after the race. However, I think that I did everything I could have done in order to have a good race. And getting on the podium and celebrating after the race was a really fun time.  The town of La Paz knows how to throw down!