Brazil is Big

Still in Brazil. We crossed the Amazon river this past week, and we are slowly making our way eastward towards the Atlantic. Not much time for posting this week, but I would like to commend Megan Dabroski and Robin Hayward for good weeks.

Amazon Rain Forest, Brazil

We are in the Brazilian state of Para, working our way through the Amazon Rain Forest. We had our best biking week of the year so far (443 miles), and our best total ground mile week of the year (578 miles).

We had one of our shortest water weeks in awhile, but we did reach the first water landmark we have seen for some time. We are now 258 miles into our swim, and we just reached Fernando de Noronha island. It is a cool little spot with a population of just over 2,000 and some beautiful beaches. Perhaps we can regroup a little there so that we can pick up our water miles from here on out.

Canaima National Park, Venezuela

6,278 miles down, only 24,522 miles to go! That's right, we are a little over 20% there.

We came to rest last Sunday in Canaima National Park in Venezuela, near the Venezuela-Brazil border. This park is known for its tepuis, or table-top mountains. Among them is Auyantepui, from which Angel Falls, the highest waterfall on earth, descends. I think it is fascinating that such a natural wonder was not officially "discovered" until 1933, when Jimmy Angel crashed his plane atop Auyantepui.

Kind of a slow week for us, but there were a few people that normally report that I did not hear from. Hopefully we will start to pick it back up this week.

Quick Update

Not much time for blogging this week. However, we are still tooling around in Venezuela, check the updates on mileage and on the map.

A little low this week (just under 500 miles by land, 16.5 by water), I think we had a couple of recovery weeks going on. Rachel Hohenstein has taken over as our top runner (almost 300 miles), and Mark Peterson is back on the board.

Quarter-Way Point

We are roughly 25% of the way through the year. We find ourselves in northern Venezuela, just east of the capital city of Caracas. We have totaled 5,032 total land miles (1,684 running, 3,347) and 216 water miles. We are 14% of the way to our biking goal, 31% of the way to our running goal, and 17% of the way to our total land miles goal. We are only 11% of the way to the water goal, but we knew that would be a tough one.

I have added a table down below to show our individual progress towards our mileage goals (for those that set goals).

Congratulations to those that are on pace. In addition to the above individuals, we should probably also mention the people who did not set goals but have been consistently kicking tail. Chris Fry and Rachel Hohenstein are among our running leaders at 231 and 253, respectively. Megan Dabroski has been consistent, and is currently at 109 miles running and 39 biking. The same can be said for Beth Pape, who is currently at 68 miles running. Lastly, despite missing several weeks recovering from knee surgery, Katie Green has totaled 71 miles running and 69 miles biking.

Lastly, for those that missed Lauren's training blog, she ran a 5k in artic temps in Waterloo last weekend, and she was very pleased with her time of 24:39. Check her blog for more details.

Keep up the good work.