Last week was a particularly challenging one for training. I flew from Venezuela to Sao Paulo, Brazil during the day on the Wednesday and managed to get into a hotel with a really good gym. I then spent a couple of hours completing a bike and weights workout. I was well pleased with this as flying for 6 hours and getting some training in on the same day is not normally an easy task.
From there, however, it was all downhill. 18 hours of meetings and a cocktail left zero possibility of a Thursday workout and Friday was an overnight flight back to Caracas, or so that was the plan. This meant leaving the hotel at 6 pm for the midnight flight which did not in fact leave until 2 am. I had visions of getting into Caracas at 5 am on Saturday and heading straight for the beach, which in my case is the Caribbean, to swim some then bike along the coast. This is truly delightful and invigorating stuff for any budding triathlete, especially after an overnight flight.
On route back home we had a scheduled stop over in Manaus, capital of the Brazilian Amazon state. Sadly, here the captain announces the flight was cancelled due to a problem with the plane and that we would now depart Sunday at 3 am – great thought I. Stuck in the Amazon and only 2 hours logged this week with grim prospects for the w/e. And so, we were put up at a hotel with a bathtub sized pool and some broken down gym machines. That said, it takes a bit more than that to put me off. With plenty of water around, a la the River Amazon, there was prime territory to go for a swim w/o. Best though to check for razor cuts 1st as the piranha get quite excited at the sniff of some blood. With all clear in that department so I headed off with Jose the taxi driver.
I had identified a sandy beach and with speedo’s, hand paddles and aquasphere arrived there with the prospects for one of the weirdest swim w/o’s so far in my very brief tri career, which saw me at Clearwater a few weeks ago propping up the table of 50 to 54 age groupers - well this was my 3rd ever comp. Back to the story - the river though looked glorious on arrival. What would Tim think to see “swam in the Amazon river today” in Training Peaks as Athletes Comments??
But, oh… so sad……..today was baptism day at my selected patch of sand and some 10,000 or so locals were witnessing about 200 of their brethren getting baptized in the fabled river. A Brit swimming through such an event was really not on. I would have been cut up for piranha bait. I therefore defaulted to tourist mode and a) visited the 1850’s theatre built by the rubber Barons then b) visited the local zoo to check out the monkeys capybara’s and anacondas etc and c) generally wandered around Manaus taking in life in the Amazon capital. Not my best training day, but a good experience, and…. well .its off season and this scores as a mental break, right? – not sure though if Tim would approve of me putting 6 hours sight seeing in TP as training time?
For the record, my other recent trip to Brazil landed me in Rio where I could swim and run in pretty good surroundings. This did go well and some useful hours got registered in TP! Saludos - Pete
In only his second triathlon Peter was able to earn a spot to the 70.3 World Championships. Maybe we should all sight see a little more?
am) jogged 10 miles in the ~6" of new snow, awesome.. Then went to the gym and lifted core and lower leg stability for 30:00 then dry sauna for 20:00 with Stick work. Then Skins full compression tights the rest of the day.
2 comments:
very cool, and very refreshing! he really needs to send you more pictures!
however, i would like peter to know that when i was in manaus, i did go swimming in the amazon, and we were having great fun until a friend suddenly leapt out of the water and had a piranha stuck to his thumb(true story). so probably not so smart....
Loved the post. I agree with kerry, we need pixs
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