First update for 2013 - SOuth America

I had four consecutive weekends of racing since I have been based in Santiago, Chile, January 2013. I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to experience the Chilean celebratory ways of New Years Eve. It’s amazing how welcoming and nice the South American people have been to me. I noticed this at the first sprint distance race in Vina Del Mar, Chile when they wanted to do everything and anything for me! The race saw myself and two others in a breakaway and it was battled out on the run. It was awesome fun because they were both good friends of mine and I came away with the win. Onto to La Paz, Argentina for the first ITU Continental Cup. This place was crazy! The people are driving motorbikes with 3-4 on each with no helmets. Even saw one eating an ice cream and driving with 2 passengers! The Argentinian way of dining was certainly an experience to remember. The waiters dodging busy traffic attempting to cross the street, hands full with our meals, truly an amazing small town. The Olympic distance race literally saw the entire town watch the race. It was like Tour de France style crowds and I ended up finishing 4th after a good swim and bike, a little disappointed with the last 5km on the run but solid points to move up in the world rankings. Straight after returning from Argentina I made the 10 hour bus trip south in Chile to the holiday destination Pucon. Wow! This place is beautiful. I Met up with my good friend Gaspar Riveros from Chile and recovered from the weekends race in La Paz. So it was jet skiing and cruising the speed boat to recover. But we did do some serious training to recover the body and the sprint distance race saw another win for me. I had a solid swim, bike and run which i was happy with after the two previous weeks racing and travel. It was another 'tough' week in Pucon jet skiing/ wake boarding and also a BBQ on the beach from wood fire. I was also lucky enough to have my birthday here which was really nice. The families I have been staying with really treated me like a son and even surprised me with a cake!  An hour and half drive from Pucon saw the last race in Validivia. The town is influenced a lot by German heritage and it’s also a very historic town with fortes from when the Spanish landed. The town has also seen a tsunami in 1960 which still show some damages. With a change in race start time, we managed to get to the start 15min before the gun. Quick change, rack the bikes and the gun went. Both Gaspar and I didn't have time for any sort of warm up but I still come away with the win. It was the strongest I felt out of the four races which I was most happy with. So there has been three wins and a fourth in the first month of racing and it’s now time to take a few days off and recover properly after all the racing. Then I will have a small solid block of training back in the heat of Sanitago for 10 days before the next two ITU continental cups in Mendoza, Argentina and Lima, Peru respectively. Both expected to be hot and humid! I look forward to it! Thanks for all the support, Shane