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An spectacular New Years Eve
Winner at Ironman
Honolulu - World Record Holder - First and only person to compete at every Ironman venue in the world.
"I have been taking MAP for your years, and every year I have been able to break my own PR, and keep myself within the first 5 places in my category, considering that I will have to keep something of myself as there were only 6 days left, to maintain my record of being the only person of having completed all the IM venues in the world." - Luis Alvarez
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 Almost every year, my sport changes in winter from the IRONMAN to mountaineering, but this time I was in the mood of doing something a little bit more extreme. I usually spend the end of the year away from the cold in some beach and I even go camping to a nice place almost close to paradise called Huatulco or I just spend the Holidays with my family like everyone else.
This last Holiday I wanted to explore my limits so I spent 4 days and its nights at minus 20 degrees and 17,000 feet above the sea level…
December 29
4:00 am, we prepared our back packs with all we needed for the adventure and after packing the minimum necessary we realized that they weighed more than 70 pounds. This would make the ascent very difficult. After driving for a couple of hours we reached 3,600 meters where our journey to the top began. With our back packs on and ready to go I wasn't feeling very well, in fact, I felt tired and sleepy maybe because that week my hands were pretty full of stressing activities from my “full time job”. Anyway, we began walking up the mountain but every step I took felt bad even though was really excited on spending New Years Eve up on the top where just a few human beings will be those days. After one hour walking up and suffering I decided to listen to my body and go back to base camp where we had some “quesadillas”, stepped into my sleeping bag, took my dosage of MAP and went to sleep at 3 in the afternoon.
December 30 
4:00 am, we woke up and I was feeling like new! We prepared coffee; I took my 10 MAP tabs and, once again, began walking. This time my more than 70 pounds felt lighter and I was feeling so strong I could hardly believe it! That day we walked 9 hours and reached the shelter half way from our final destination where we made camp 2, prepared some food and set up our sleeping bags right before one of the most spectacular sun sets we have ever seen.
 December 31
After spending an interesting night with 15 strangers from all over the world we were woken up by the strong wind of the mountain right before the sun came out. We packed our things and began walking very slowly the most demanding part of our journey over a sandy, very fluffy, very windy and indeed stiff area. This is one of the most dangerous parts of the mountain. Our back packs became very uncomfortable and they affected our balance and worse, we were heading through the “Cruz de Guadalajara.” Its a rocky pass that we had to scale. This name was given after 14 out of 20 students on an expedition from Guadalajara lost their lives due to the fog while trying to navigate those rocks when they fell down into the precipice. It wasn't an easy task, putting one foot in front of the other and holding tightly to the rocks we finally made it through.
 Ahead of us was still a long way to go, some difficult and very narrow passes where the ice was beginning to show its presence. Finally we reached our destination. We arrived at the glacier. We stopped to put on our crampons and began walking in the ice towards a huge rock. In 15 minutes we reached the place where we were going to set our tent. We had to secure the tent in the ice so we wouldn't be airborne in the middle of the night because of the strong wind. We sat down to have some very deserved MAP caps and a good lunch.
As the sun went down, it got very cold. But we began our New Year's Eve celebration with a Veuve de Cliquot champagne bottle, some cheese and jam and Bengal lights around our tent. The only human beings at 17,000 ft , it was spectacular!! January 1 st . Coming Down …
The first day of the year was beautiful, not a single cloud. We raised the camp, had breakfast and began our journey down when we realized why was the sky was so clear and beautiful. The wind was so strong we could hardly walk. We made a good effort to reach the “Cruz the Guadalajara ” point where we decided it was too dangerous to go down through there because the wind could make us fall down. So we instead took the sandy downhill right beside the rocks where we had to take care of each other's head because the loose rocks could hit us on our way down. With a lot of work we reached we reached the shelter and kept going down right to the “quesadillas” where we had some as well as a very deserved beer. Happy and very satisfied with the adventure we went home to rest what remained of the first year of 2008.
A belated happy New Year to you too.
Luis Alvarez
Articles from Luis:
Nutrition Tips for an Ironman -
The heart rate monitor as a daily tool -
Competions in cold weather -
How to do 10 IRONMAN in a year without injuries -
250 MILES BIKE RIDE IN EXTREME CONDITIONS -
Health or Fitness -
Thanks to MAP I broke my PR 4 years in a row -
Quality or Quantity -
Three Òfamilies" of Injuries -
Mountain Training for Triathlon -
How I have been able to really increase my IRONMAN racing speed - What's my training pulse? The Maffetone Method -
Lesson in Overcoming -
Lesson in Overcoming -
Luis Alvarez does it again! Amazing! -
MAP not only for athletes -
RUNNING WITH THE POSE METHOD -
MAP Team Member Luis Alvarez does it again -
Ironman Pre-Season -
An spectacular New Years Eve
MAP. It is not only for training
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