May 28 2010 The odyssey to train with Olympic athletes

Cataratas Paksong

I am in Vientiane, the capital of Laos (as you all know). Yesterday I received the gavel on all ribs. I'll tell. I do not know if I said that part of my trip I am dedicating to know the stages of this continent. I get to shift housing (which have much tendency to call home, so I do not see the house I'll have this year) , looking for where she is sports and go in the evenings, to sunset, begin to run a Rato. Sometimes, if I find people, instead I'm in for impromptu games of football where I quickly become a star, not for my talent but for my pale face and legs white. I feel Beckham walk in the Congo ... People ask me if I'm professional ... makes me want to answer them: “Sí, but the body of football I wear only on Sundays ".

Well. Yesterday I went to the Olympic Stadium in Vientiane, where last December's Asian Games were held. Certainly, I have the stadium built the Chinese have, return, appears to be, exploitation of several salt built on the banks of the Mekong. A sweet deal. Little investment, return much pulp. This China has more tentacles than an octopus. Remember the bullies of the Cold War.
The fact is that I get to the stadium and then I go to five or six runners. I shot to the neck of a foreigner who looks like and tell: “Are you running beside the river?”, and the guy tells me, in perfect Spanish: “Claro, come go with us ". Uncle, a great uncle, Alex is, a donor of Gandia, if not for their professional occupations, athlete could race in Spain. Just say you have a brand 30 minutes in the 10.000, twelve minutes better than mine .... As different galaxies, we.
Total, I start to run with them and I start to tell Alex that those who are with us are the champions of Laos 10.000, half marathon and marathon, that have recently participated in Asian Games. And the girl who goes with us, Arena, participated in two Olympics in the Marathon. I start to get colorao, and say, Juancho, Where have you been!…
Very nice the river. Very nice, the race. Alex, enthusiastically, speaks to me and asks me things ... I try to answer the first, then I have no choice but to recognize that the most important for me is trying to return to the stadium without fainting, sometimes I see dead ...
At last, about an hour later, my ordeal ends, and while the kids, still not entirely satisfied, entertain themselves by making a few thousands in times stratospheric, I'm stretching with Areena and interrogated him about his two Olympic Games.
This woman is great, wild, a lioness. He says that the worst at first were the fights of his mother and the police to leave home in shorts (in Laos the average annual temperature is over 26 degrees). He says he eventually had to buy some tights, and that he spent fatal, but going out to train twice a day, at half past four and half past four p.m., provocative and passed ahead of the police. And, between means, worked.
He tells me he was not very late coach, and are trained according to a book he had given. And that one day someone came in and told the Federation: "You are very good athlete, you're going to the Olympics in Atlanta ". And she said: "What do? How well. What are the Olympic Games?”. Great.
He went to Atlanta. He says he did not live any of the Olympic village because he was intimidated, I did not know what to do, and hardly was the dining room to his room and practice field. He was last, about an hour and a half from the winner.
But not discouraged, and proceeded. Then, before the following games, the Sydney, was interviewed by an American TV, and the camera focused a lot on their feet, shoes whose fingers out almost. A newspaper Vientian echoed the interview, and soon he began to get shoes from all corners of Asia and Latin. "The TV is fine", she says. Well look, for that, course. He went to Sydney, and this time it was last, and also "had a great time and made many friends. In order to understand what is going to the Games ".
No wonder I have to say that I feel the courage of a woman who overcomes all their sporting dreams remain just that, a woman in a macho country, who do not practice sport, living on the verge of poverty and where more than aid has had to settle for the not stopped by freak.
Alex is making us as cicerone in Vientiane, before we leave for Luang Prabang, which is a World Heritage city and where it seems everyone stops for a few weeks ... Maybe we do. Do not want to end up without a huge thanks to Alex for all your help and the wonderful sincerity of his kindness.
And do not make you want to end up without a recommendation. If you came to Laos, and enter by the south, Cambodia border, as I did, do not fail to stop at Pakse, rent a bike and go away to see the falls there as 20 km, in a place called Paksong. The photo was, ground for Daro envidia, made before the camera jorobara me and Ro in my arms, does not do justice to the wonderful spectacle of water and two hours of trekking through fields of coffee you need to do to reach it ...