Racing at over 13,000ft. - Who Stole the Oxygen?

Last week they held the annual swim across Lake Titicaca at the strait of Tiquina, so I thought it’d be fun to compete. Consider that the water is about 50 degrees (12C), but the bigger obstacle is that it’s at 4000m (13,500ft). Anybody ever tried swimming at 13,500ft? Even though I workout everyday at 12,500ft I get winded just walking around there. So it a bit tough, but really interesting because I was the only foreigner there, and hence the object of much attention. Luckily I have a wetsuit here, but everyone else covers themselves in grease – like people attempting to swim the English Channel in the 1950s. Afterwards they interviewed me for the newspaper and two television stations. Wow, giving an interview in Spanish is tough. By the end everyone knew my name and literally everyone (about 40 competitors and twice as many spectators) came up to me as we were leaving to say goodbye and thank me for coming. All the naval officers there came up to me before I got on a bus back to La Paz and said, “Greg, gracias para su participacion.” All the tourists coming from the lake gave me these looks, like “who the hell is he?” It was really crazy. But just another day in Bolivia.

Then Sunday I competed in “El Maraton” de La Paz, and even though it was actually only a third of a marathon I think it is deserving of the title as the partial pressure of oxygen here is only about a third! It was the biggest race in Bolivian history with a turnout of almost 19,000 runners and I was surprised at how fit many of them were.

Several people ran with backpacks, one girl ran with her dog, and one guy ran in a Shrek costume. I couldn’t believe that there was still a guy in front of me near the end of the race wearing a backpack. It was motivation to pick up the pace and pass him.

The craziest thing was the start. In typical Bolivian form it was totally disorganized, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I was trying to figure out if both sides of the street started at the same time so I asked a policeman, and he said yes. But I didn’t really believe him so I asked another policeman, who said that one side was for men and the other for women who start later. Great. Then I asked another and he said, no they start at the same time. The 4th said it was men on one side women on the other. Classic Bolivia… nobody has a clue about what’s supposed to happen. So I got in on the crowded side, just in case. They were going to have a several wave start with wheelchairs going first, then professionals, then men, then women. But when a couple pros stepped over the line to move up to the next line, a few other people stepped over the rope as well, and then all of the sudden everybody thought the race had started and started pushing forward. The police were trying to hold the line but were powerless to stop the mob of 19,000 people pushing forward. Finally people realized it was a mistake and stopped at the next line. The police tried to get everyone to move back with a megaphone that was only loud enough to be heard 5 feet away, but people yelled “no carajo, vamos vamos!”

When the finally started everyone went at once and there was a dead sprint uphill. Two seconds later it looked like people were already a half kilometer away. Everyone was pushing which caused several people to fall down and subsequently get trampled by 100s of people. I thought for sure someone was going to die because no one cared about running on top of the people lying on the ground. Despite all the excitement, I finished towards the front (at least in the first 1,000) with a time of 67 minutes, which I thought was okay considering that there were over 500 meters of hills.