Baja Travesia Started Today

The Baja Travesia expedition adventure race started this morning in Baja, Mexico. Team Helly Hansen - MOMAR has many friends racing at the event this year and although I have been cheering for all of them, it pains me to be sitting on the sidelines for a race like this. My work situation changed so drastically in the last five weeks and I went from being completely unable to make it down for this race, to sitting here on my hands and biting my tongue as I constantly check in on the leaderboard. Currently Lina Augaitis' team Yoga Slackers are leading the way! Go Lina Go!! My team raced alongside of the Yoga Slackers for about ten hours during XPD Australia and they are both top notch guys. I'm sure they're having a blast down there right now!

Here's a course preview:

Paddleboard relay: 5 km
Trek: 30 km
Rally cars (time neutral): 25 km
Trek: 30 km, ascending a canyon some 7000’
Bike: 91 km a big downhill along amazing remote single-track
Trek: 26 km another canyon
Bike: 60 km another big downhill
Trek: 25 km
Bike: 35 km
Kayak: 17 km to Ensenada
TOTAL: 349 km
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Meanwhile, back in winterland,


Todd made it over from Vic for the weekend and we put together a couple of solid training days. On Sat the weather held and we managed a good paced 120km road ride to Whistler and back. We stopped off at my fav, cheap, Whistler Sushi place, Samurai Sushi and then went to work punishing each other over the hills back into Squamish.


Sunday was not so nice with the rain hammering down, but we headed to North Van to meet up with some of the Montrail-Mtn Hardware Trail Running Team. We then helped out with marshaling a portion of the 'My First Trail Race' 10k course, before heading out for a 2.5hr run of our own. We intended to go for longer, but an ill timed bag drop left us without food, fluids, or a change of clothes! Todd hopped on the road bike and headed back to Victoria, and I drove back up to Squamish and jumped on the mtn bike for a few hours. All in all I logged exactly 20hr of training last week and am feeling really good right now. This is a scheduled recovery week of 15hr before my final three week build, followed by a taper, heading into Miwok on May 3rd...WOW, almost April already! Hard to believe that we'll all be running around in shorts and a t-shirt in no time at all...while a few lucky bastards are doing that as we speak down in Baja!!

GR