Post IM 70.3 Cartagena blues.... err Report

Last year, after we finished IM Cozumel while we were exploring the streets of Mexico City an announcement came up on Facebook that Ironman was coming to Colombia. It was a 70.3 distance and was going to be held in the beautiful city of Cartagena. Without much hesitation we called my brother and sister and they were already making plans.
We came back from vacation and by then Brian, whom we were traveling in Mexico with, had already convinced his wife to let him do it and to plan a vacation. So the planning started on our end. My family came to visit us over Xmas so we were able to get some details in person. My sister had a friend who owned a couple of condos in the City so that was the main thing. Getting that squared away since it is the most expensive of all. The next thing we had to worry about was getting there. For us was relatively easy. JetBlue flies direct to Cartagena from JFK at a reasonable price without too many additional charges. The bikes are also one of the cheapest of any carrier, however due to the military status they were free for us. Thank you Uncle Sam.

Our vacation started to take shape when my sister moved to Medellin, JetBlue flies to Medellin as well though FLL and since Adriana had never been there and I was there about 20+ years ago we then planned to go there first and head to Cartagena with her and my parents since they were going to meet us in Medellin to spend a little longer with us.
Medellin will be probably another blog entry on either one of our blogs but I’ll try to focus on the race for this one.  

Getting to Cartagena:
Since we were flying from Medellin, we took a domestic Avianca flight to Cartagena. One way was about $100 each and Avianca being the official airline of the race was taking our bikes for free. Little parenthesis here, TriBike transport announced in October they were taking bikes, but since it was so late for it they couldn’t get the 50 min bikes needed to transport them. It all worked out, but definitely something that the race needs to work on. There were enough groups from the USA that would’ve benefited from the service and for most that were traveling on extended vacations having one less headache would’ve been ideal.  

Once in Cartagena bikes and all, arrived decided to get a big van service. It charged us about US $17 to take 6 of us and 3 bikes. If we would’ve split into UberBlacks might have been about $20 each and needed 2, and forget about taxis, that would’ve been probably $30. So it all worked out at the end. In terms of logistics I think we were pretty lucky. We flew to Cartagena on Thursday 12/1 in an attempt to get acclimated to the weather. Not sure if it worked or not, I might need more time for that after a few fall/winter weeks at home.  

The Expo Shenanigans:

The expo opened up on Friday at 10 am. Guess what... everyone had the same idea, get

the expo out of the way as soon as possible. We stood in line unnecessarily for about 2 hours, luckily it was inside the Convention Center but still we were standing. People that arrived much later were done a lot faster. Only downfall was that the race shirts for women were gone and also the race bag color were limited by then. No biggie, we did some shopping at the IM store since we learned our lesson that most of international races don’t make it out to the regular IM store website, so rather get it or forever hold your peace.  Only time we buy finishers gear before the race and ignore the superstition.

We had done a short out and back ride earlier that morning on the route since our condo was on the route, we did about 18 miles out and back. You go through a toll booth on race day so we just returned right before the toll booth. It was HOTTTT and we got a feel for what it was going to be on race day. Some folks that had done the route said that after the toll booth there were some false flats and the 2 climbs of the route (more on that later).  

Saturday:

We did a little ocean swim again to get a feel for the water, we knew it was going to be different since the swim happens at a bay next to the convention center, so the water is a lot calmer than just open ocean.  Then we went to get the bikes to transition and dinner with the family. Luckily we had 4 of us plus Maria Claudia and Maribel going to transition together and they had a cab that was behind us protecting us because riding on the roads can be a bit scary sometimes. 

Race Day

Race day started with everyone doing their morning rituals for breakfast and all that good stuff. The house was still kinda quiet. No one really talked to each other, everyone was concentrated on their own stuff and things were just moving along. Getting our number tats on and packing up the nutrition. We were so concentrated that we forgot about our sherpas' nutrition and hydration for them. Note to self, always remember their needs too.
We scheduled 2 vans to take the 9 of us to the race start at 4:30 am, so by 4:30 am we were leaving the building. By 4:50 we were in transition. We then set it all up, we had frozen all our bottles since we knew by the time we got to the start everything would've been melted and wouldn't been hot as hell. Nothing worse than warm Infinit. Pumped air on all 4 bikes, set up transition and got everything set. Then it was the waiting game.

The swim:
Race was technically supposed to start by sunrise. However it got delayed. We didn't hear why it got delayed, all we thought was every minute it is delayed now it is more heat and more sun that we will get. By then our Sherpas had taken their positions and we were by the convention center area where everyone was gathering. Our early hydration was done, and the heat was starting to climb. The wait seemed like forever. I came to find out when we were leaving at the airport from another athlete  that the wait was because the buoys that were moving.


 Anyways the canon for the pro's went off and then our waves started to move. My sister, Adriana and Margo were within the first 10 waves, I was 17 out of 20. I wasn't worried about the cutoffs, I was just worried about the heat. Finally my brother and I got in the water. He was swimming with a friend that had OWS fear, so since he wasn't doing the bike then he helped him through the swim. Once our horn went off I waited about 10-15 seconds and started my swim. We were swimming east first so we had the sun in front of us. Our ROKAS performed great but still once the sun is in front of you it just gets annoying. I followed the buoys on the way out to the turn. Once at the turn I knew I was in better shape. The sun was then on our left and by the second turn it was going to be on our backs. I reached the second turn and I went a little wide which cost me swimming maybe 200 yds extra and of course cost me the PR on my swim. My swim split was 40:40 (146 out of 320, finally towards the front of the middle  :), with an avg of 1:47 /100 yds. A little slower than I expected it, I wanted to go sub 40 but I didn't pay attention to it. Got out of the water, the volunteers did great pulling us out of the water, my zipper on my speedsuit got stuck so I couldn't unzip myself. I went to one of the girls and asked her to help me, then I saw my dad and threw the goggles and cap to him. The run to T1 was about 250 meters. Luckily for me I was right at the entrance of transition and since my brother didn't have his bike and was next to me I had some room. I was surprised that most of the bikes on my rack were still there, my T1 was pretty simple, put on the race jersey, helmet, glasses and nutrition. Shoes were on the bike since I knew I had to run out a bit so I didn't want to run on the shoes. T1: 3:41.



The Bike: 

By the time I started the bike it was hot. I had a Gatorade while I ran out of T1 and got on my way. Leaving the city the road isn't great but isn't too bad either, my plan was to settle myself in a rhythm by the time we got out of the busy area which was past our condo. So I was 7 miles just focusing on staying on the bike, road and others around me. Once I got to the divided highway I started the nutrition. The heat was hitting hard, so it made taking in nutrition hard. I kept looking for the girls to see if I saw them going down but I didn't. I saw Claudia, then finally I saw my sister near the turn around. I did the math and she was maybe 5 miles up the road. The bike course is not a flat course. It has a few rollers and then towards mile 25 it has 2 climbs, when I got to the first one I dropped my  chain mid climb, got off the bike and fixed it quickly, so didn't waste too much time. Then got to the second climb and at the top was the turn around. I kept my power where I needed it, 75-80% so I knew I was in good

shape. I actually tried to dial it down a bit since I knew the heat was going to take a  toll on me and there was no way I could keep up. As soon as I turned around I saw Margo, she was doing well, then down the road my sister, chatted with her a bit and 2 bikes down I caught up Adriana. The 3 girls were trucking along. I had about 7 miles and bike traffic got congested. Couldn't pass and it just seemed like it was taking forever to go through those 7 miles. we had a short rain shower earlier that cooled us off a bit but it just increased the humidity. I saw a friend of my brother and we tagged along (keeping a distance) or a bit, but it was too congested so I just stayed back, didn't want to get carded or anything. Officials were all over, they had a ton of motorcycles on the course with officials, I didn't want to get penalties or anything. No drafting means no drafting. My bike was a PR bike by a few seconds, with a 2:48:57 and avg of 19.975 mph I was pretty happy with it. Riding with power and sticking to it really has helped because I got off the bike and had legs which in the past that has never been the case. I usually hammer the bike and start the run with dead legs. I came back to transition put my socks on, got my hat and shoes on and off I went. T2 was faster than T1 with a 2:54 time. 

The Run:
Oh the run. I came back from the bike and while I was feeling pretty good, I wanted to get into a conformable pace. By comfortable I didn’t want to push sub 10:00/miles right off the gates. I wanted to take some hydration, cool my body off a little and see what damage I could do on the run. The first kilometer right off transition is outside the wall and you enter into the walled city right after the first aid station. While running that part, I saw Angela (my sister) and Adriana come in, I knew they were safe and sound back home. I hadn’t seen Margo but I knew she was probably another 30-40 minutes behind them according to my math. I managed to get some Base Salts in me and water on me. The sun was hitting hard on us, and by the time we entered the city no wind, just sun, heat, humidity, and more heat. 

The streets were packed with tourists, cheering crowds, DJs at the aid stations cheering us, it was pretty fun to run through the city. Finally I saw my mom standing and Claudia, Shayla and my dad in the back, I have my mom the biggest sweaty wet hug I have ever given her when I saw her. She then sent me off, saw them back on the return and asked for my sister and brother. I knew my brother was jumping again into the race to run with my sister to take her from the bike to the finish line but I hadn’t seen them. My dad said they were already together. I then saw  Adriana, she was going out on her first loop and I was coming back. She had lost her Base Salt vial, I gave her mine, I knew I could just finish it without it. She looked strong but was missing the salts. I saw my brother and sister and they were shuffling away, lastly I saw Margo, she looked pretty good, but I knew the bike had taken a toll on her,

however once on the run I knew she will get it done. As you are returning on your loop they take you on the wall for about 1 kilometer, at the top of it they give you sponges, however it is probably the hottest part of the race. Imagine a 500 year wall made out of limestone at noon. That thing is HOT!!!!. The first time I went through it fine. I got my sponges and got out as quick as I could. Then I went to finish my first loop and get back into the second loop. I started talking to a few guys and we kept motivating each other, but the heat was just taking casualties. I got back to my parents and I wanted to look strong, so I was attempting to run those stretches, the walking was a lot more on that second loop. Once I got through the second part of the wall I looked at my watch and I just went for it, I was 2 kilometers out so I was just committed to run to the last aid station and then from there get a sprint to the end. 

The finish was packed, they take you under the clock tower and there is where the food and medical tents are. I finally found a place to sit next to a pool full of cold gatorades and ice. I just dumped the towels they gave me in that and cooled my self down. Saw Maria Claudia and Diego (buddies from Texas) then Adriana came so we just stayed there to rest a little. Then my sister came up with my brother, took a picture but she could hardly stand up, she was really struggling with the heat so we went to cool her off immediately and lastly Margo showed up. 

We all finished what we had started. A race that we prepared for all year, a season well planned, no injuries, great shape, strong in all 3 disciplines. We knew it was going to be hot, just wasn’t expecting it that hot. Was it a PR? No it wasn’t, I still got my PR at Atlantic City, did I want a PR? Yes I did. Did it matter? No. To me what mattered the most was being able to spend 2 weeks with my family, race with Adriana, my brother, sister as a family and of course our plus 1… Margo who became part of the family on this trip.

In general, for those looking to do Cartagena, I highly encourage you to do it. I really hope that Ironman continues it. Cartagena is a city that if you plan your trip well it caters to the tourist and to the families. Does the organization need to tweak things, of course they do. It is the first time an event of this size comes to the city or even the country. The pros had a fiasco with their running routes…

What a year it was... and the year it will be

Here we are a couple of days into 2015 and while we did a lot of thinking at the end of 2014 about our year, we definitely did a lot of thinking about our future.

Our year we consider it a successful year. We had our ups and downs but we were able to complete all our races. Did we meet our goals, well... maybe not quite... and I'll spare you the details on why we didn't meet those goals, the better question is what did we learn?

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” 

― Albert Einstein

When we embarked for our 2014 journey, we knew it was a tough year ahead of us. We had made the decision to do 2 full distance triathlons 4 months apart. So what did we learn by doing that? We definitely learned a lot... do we know a lot? better off... we understand a lot.
We undestand the sport a lot better now,
We understand our bodies
We understand what our coach means no more than before
We also know now... we are crazy :)

On this sport there is not enough learning, we read a lot, and there is a ton of information out there in the cyberspace, friends, teammates, coaches, books, etc. but what we do with that information and if we understand it makes a big difference in our performance.

Definitely learning to listen to our bodies was key on this process, can't emphasize enough, that while we are the typical weekend warriors:

• 8-5 jobs, 
• somewhat of a social life (very limited nowadays), 
• no athletic background

we were able to understand that we needed to gain enough endurance to do the 2 races and be able to complete them without putting our bodies through that much misery and avoid injuries in the process. We had gained a bunch during 2013 while training for Ironman Texas, and kept up training for the Dallas Marathon, but we did a lot of racing. We call it the excitement of the season and craziness. We clearly didn't want to do that this year. We didn't do short tris, did maybe 2 5k's for charity events but didn't do any thing else. We wanted to get most of our training in and not let shorter races take our focus away from them. Not that those aren't fun, we enjoy them too, but we had made that commitment and stuck with it. Our bodies thanked us and our wallets did too. 

So in summary we did:

Challenge AC Finish

Ironman Arizona Finish

That's a lot of miles and a lot of hours of sweat, blood and tears. Only had one major accident, a few blisters, lots of tears, but wouldn't change it for anything in the world. Once again we were able to do it by having each other side by side. We learned a lot how to train with each other, not that we didn't do it before, but this time we were a lot of times by ourselves on our training days since very few people from the team had the same races as we did or simply we were on different schedules. It is definitely a perk of being an #ironcouple since you are guaranteed that your lonely training days will be limited. Of course, we had those, but not by choice, mainly when one of us was traveling or something like that. For that, we felt blessed and are much stronger as a couple.... to the point that we dragged each other through both finish lines... :) That's a priceless feeling that no matter how much we complain during training, or to our coach, or to each other, no one will take that away from us. We don't compete with each other... we want to be better but we want to be better together. 

So our 2014 year came to an end, 2015 starts, it will be a year of new beginnings. You probably saw on previous blogs or our instagrams that we are moving back to the East Coast. While it is scary, it is exciting at the same time, we are excited to get closer to family and to have a change.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy

We will definitely continue to tri in our new home,  and have our 2015 season planned. We will continue training with our coach Mike and our IronTex team while exploring new training grounds. Stay tuned for updates on how we do and our findings, we can't wait to share those with you all. 

13 in 2013

A year in review. What a year!... we started this year with so many dreams and goals... actually was more like one dream and one goal and it was to become an Ironcouple. It was a dream to some extend but more than anything it became a celebration. A celebration of a journey of 6 months of training and hard work. So this year more than anything has been a celebration and continuing our journey to living fit, healthy while doing triathlons in the process.

But wait.... what about the rest of the year... :)?. For starters, we had planned our year when we were in Colombia last Xmas, but clearly weren't thinking straight. We somehow planned a whole bunch of races through the year that actually ended up being a total of 14 races (13 since Dallas Marathon got cancelled Puli's Elusive Marathon | Res' Elusive Marathon). Hence the 13 in 2013 title.

You probably have seen the blog posts and race recaps on some of them, which yeah we accept it, gets kind of boring at times for you the reader. For us, is a way to get our feelings out of our chest. Definitely as we plan 2014 we will try to do a better job at diversifying and also caring more about you the reader. Anything you want to hear about from our "couple" perspective feel free to let us know, sometimes we welcome ideas. With Res' new blog she plans to cover a broader public and she is planning something really exciting with her blog, it's just taking time to consolidate.

So our year came and went... and it was fast. Maybe the fact that we were so busy training, working, traveling, trying to have  a life just made it go by so fast. It just seems like it was yesterday when we were leaving to Colombia at the start of our Ironman training and here we are waiting for our family to arrive and reminiscing about our accomplishments, failures, lessons learned, and everything in general. Just in case you missed them, here is a list of all our races of 2013 (and some of the reports).

1. Cowtown Half Marathon
2. St. Patty's Sprint Tri
3. Galveston 70.3 Res Report  | Puli Report
4. Ironman Texas
5. Disco Olympic Tri
6. River Cities Sprint Tri
7. Belmar Chase 5K
8. DFW Lab Rescue 5K
9. Trifecta Olympic Tri
10. Rahr & Sons 5K
11. Bourbon Chase 2013
12. Friends of the River 6K
13. No Limits Half Marathon

It was definitely a busy year to say the least, we probably could've done without some of the races but thinking back, it wasn't too bad. Maybe a little bit harder after May as we had probably hit the Triathlon Blues and didn't have motivation to do anything training related. It was going out to just go out and enjoy a workout. In retrospect, that was probably the best idea. We had a few races after Ironman and while we said we would "train" for them, we definitely didn't push as hard during training, we were burned out. We didn't hate triathlon or anything like that, we are still in love with it, it was just a mental and physical burn out and needed a break, we would've taken it but we didn't want the registration money to simply go to waste by not showing up. :).

With traveling for work constantly thrown in the mix it was pretty hard to keep each other motivated to go out and hit the trails, or simply go for a swim. We still managed to do the races and actually we both got to PR at our 5Ks every time we were doing them and that was a great feeling, just imagine if we were training a little bit more... :) unstoppable... just kidding.

In general our 2013 was a great year. As an IronCouple we are stronger than ever, 8 years and going and still running side by side (well not so much while running but you get the idea). We definitely got out of our comfort zone, 140.6 miles are enough proof of it, but our Bourbon Chase, tri-ing at different distances, not giving up on training and keeping at it, are a true testament to our love to tris and how we enjoy them. 

The Engineer had to create a chart for it :)

• Swim: 117837 yards or 67 miles or 42 hours (the equivalent to 2356 laps in the pool)
• Bike: 2330 miles or 141 hours (Distance between San Jose, CA to Savannah, GA)
• Run: 705 miles or 134 hours (the equivalent to 27 marathons)


• Brick: 217 miles or 16 hours

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year y'all!!!

Those stats don't count the racing stats but I'm sure you see that it sure looks and sounds like a lot. However, to us it has become part of our lives, it does look impressive but is not like we did it all in one week or anything like that, it was a process and as a process it takes time, dedication, sweat and tears. 

So as we celebrate Christmas and welcome the New Year we continue with our celebration of 2013 and wish you the best on 2014. Our 2014 will definitely be a challenging year in the tri world but for now time to enjoy the family, good food and we will retake it when the NewYear begins.