Getting into Guatemalan cycling

In my first ever blog post I told you about the overall “plot” of this blog. I think it’s in order to tell you a little bit about the background story. I will try to keep it short, so I don’t lose you on the way:

In January 2017 I moved to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I brought a suitcase of clothes and my road bike. I had been cycling since the summer of 2016 and started to see some glimpses of my fitness from my teen years when I played football and floorball. Anyway, I started to ride on the roads around the city of Quetzaltenango and realized quickly that the infrastructure hasn’t really come that far as in the south of Sweden. But on my second or third ride I met another road cyclist who happened to speak English and I had made my first Guatemalan friend, a cycling friend. He showed me some awesome climbs, among others the “famous” climb up to the “cumbre Alaska”, peak Alaska. I have been told it’s called Alaska because its always cold up there at just above 3000 meters over sea level. All the sudden I was in my new friends cycling team who competes at the Guatemalan elite level and that was not what I expected or even hoped for when I picked up cycling. But I thought that I at least could give it a try and see if I enjoyed it, so I went for it without having the slightest clue of what I was doing or getting in to. I went in with headfirst at the deep end I just prayed to not come in last position. I started to train but it was more like just riding around without any plan, chasing strava segments and get a high average speed on every ride I did. As I said, I didn’t (don’t?) have a clue what I was doing and I had to learn everything by myself, often the hard and painful way. I still do, trial and error and I will probably never learn all I need to know about this sport.

My first race took place in April 2018. This was going to be my first race ever in a country I didn’t understand with a language I didn’t speak at all with an extreme lack of experience and skill. A couple of days before I got a cold with some fever, but I went to the race anyway which was a three-day long race with four stages, that was about it what I knew about the race. Profile and such were going to be a surprise. And a surprise it was….

                                     View from the top of "Alaska". An iconic climb for us living in Quetzaltenango