As you all know I was a bit scared about this race since I had never done a sprint before. I knew I was going to go anaerobic for the whole race so that scared me a bit All my previous experiences listed Olympic distance races and a 1/3~1/2 IM hybrid distance. So expectation was really building up as days passed by and this sprint came closer and closer.

Here in Guatemala the weather the last couple of days before the race was really hot but perfect for a race starting at 6:15am. We had had all week temperatures in the range of 26°C and even 28°C at noon. 0 clouds it was perfect. But damn on Sunday morning everything changed. I had checked the weather forecast for the weekend and nothing predicted this sudden change. I woke up to a fully clouded ski (grey clouds they were) heavy winds and a temperature between 15°C and 17°C I know this is hot for many of you guys living in the States and Canada but for us here in Sunny Guatemala is not very common. And you don’t like the idea of jumping into a pool (yeah to bad it was a pool swim race and not open waters) that was so cold I thought I was going to read a DNF next to my name at the end. I couldn’t breath in that water for the first couple of minutes. My HR went from 90 to 130 just by jumping into the water.

I don’t want to make such a long race report so here it goes…after jumping into the water with almost 30mitues delay to the official start time I started swimming…well struggling. I have never in my life had such a disgusting swim before. There where way too many people in the lane I was freezing (nobody had their wetsuits, nobody guessed what the temp was going to be since it had been really hot the last couple of days and the forecast didn’t said anything also). The people that where in my lane where clearly not so friendly and their sportsmanship was non-existing. When I tried to pass 2 guys in particular I got bad reactions from them hands obstaculasing me, and even one of this dumb asses started to swim breath stroke so it was difficult for me to pass. Ohhh I kicked their ass on the bike sooo bad…but that’s another story.

Finally the worst swim of my life ended and I got to T1 with rain. All my stuff was wet but I went on. The bike was a 4 loop course and on the first turn around I felt my back tire sliding on the slippery road. I was sure I was going to hit the ground for sure. Don’t ask me how but I didn’t feel. Not that time… and not the other 2 times my tire slide. Let me tell you that in the turn around near t1 they had to pull a couple of carpets for us to be able to turn around with out trouble since in the first loop aprox. 14 people fell. One of them breaking his leg and hip (he went directly to the hospital). Me and my wife got out of the bike course in one piece. But I struggled there too. At least my wife had changed her tires for a pair of Continental ones (don’t remember the model) but she said she didn’t slide once not even a little bit (know I get that that $ was well spent)

The run went ok but not as I expected making my awful awful finish time 1:36 aprox. Never had I dreamed of that time but…the swim was horrible, the bike really made you feel unsecured, and the run had 2 huge hills that sucked time away from me.

It was a horrible race but a good experience. Or I´ll leave it in “another experience to the list”