Javier, in 2019 you could qualify for Kona. A big dream you chased
and realised after putting down your strongest Ironman in Cairns.
A big step forward, of course you wanted to continue this step forward in 2020. Untill
the lockdown in Colombia came.  How did you experience the lockdown and
training?

 My pre-Covid19 plan was to chase a 2021 Kona Slot in IM Wisconsin (sept 13^th) in order to have enough time to recover and prepare well.  When the pandemic started  I thought my late year race was not in cancellation´s risk. So I had no problems with keep high motivation´ levels.  The lock down brought big changes and challenges in my job. The first 3 months were so difficult and needed a big effort to modify the way my team works.  Fortunately I could manage and take the control back.  The training gave me the mental refresh I needed to keep the calm.  The homeworking let me avoid the Bogota´s Traffic jam and save about 90 minutes/day, so I started to sleep and recover better.

In Colombia pools were closed from April to September and now they
still aren’t available very often. In Bogota you could only swim in the
weekend, and for now all is closed again.
You are a steady swimmer. How do you look to this difficulty? 
I spent my childhood swimming. This background still pays, I remember i raced in IM 70.3 Panama 2016 without any swimming training in more than one year, and survived to 1900 meters in Panama Channel, and achieve a 70.3 World Championship´s slot.  This time I tried to save the shape with strength work at least 3 times by week, and did some open waters.  When I came back to the pool I still swam relatively good. I could swam about 5 weeks until the Covid´s second wave´s lock down. I´m confident I can swim soon and fastly recover the shape.  

Cycling and running outdoors weren’t possible also, which made you
train a lot on the treadmill and turbo. This fortunately was something
you are quite used to. U managed on doing your running sessions on a 68m
parking lot, down at your appartment. Non-sportsmen call that crazy,
sportsmen say ‘respect’ to this. How did you experience this? 

The running sessions on the parking lot was crazy, I focused on my ipod playlist and not get an ankle´s twist on the thousands of turns that I have to do.   I ran in that conditions about 2 months (from march to may), when I came back to street my running shape still was good.  And my mental strenght too.  My cycling training did not change, before Covid more than 95% of my cycling training was indoor because of time efficiency , bad weather and safety. With the lock down I started to do some sessions on Zwift,… so my lonely cycling sessions started to be more fun

In 2021 you are racing Ironman70.3 Acapulco, Mexico and Ironman Lake
Placid, USA. Training is going fine, without swimming at this point.
Performance and consistency are going hand in hand for athletes, past 9
months I never felt any lack of motivation but you always looked at the
positive points in this matter. Eyes on what will be, when it will
be…and meanwhile you are training smart, to perform better later.

 You planned on me a recovery period last September. I could refresh the body and mind, and came back to training in good conditions. I think my shape is coming  back and I´m going to be ready and strong for 2021 races. I hope to be able to come back to KONA.  

I´m hungry for race again!

Thanx Javier for sharing us your thoughts and onwards to what’s coming next!

Jesse