A week in Mexico City

I’ve been spending the last seven days a bit south of the border, some 2,000 miles from Washington DC in Mexico City, Mexico.  I’m down here for work, and while it’s kept me quite busy during the week – I did have a bit of an opportunity to check out some of the local sights this weekend before I headed onto my next country.

Last Sunday was a pretty long day for me, I started off with a 4AM wakeup call for the NYC Triathlon, and then after my wave started at 5:54AM, I finished around 8AM.  From there I made haste to the hotel to pack, before doubling back to transition which opened at 11AM to get my bike.  After which, I biked back to the hotel to pack the bike and shower.  18 minutes later I was in a taxi on my way to LaGuardia airport.  After a short 45 minute flight, I landed at Regan Airport – only to do the two-step-tango via my house to drop-off my bike and then back out to Washington Dulles airport…where…at 5PM, my little plane would take off from Mexico city.  I finally got to my hotel room in Mexico City around 11PM local time.

Yes, it was a busy day.

Anyway…moving onto my actual stay here – I’ll do the touristy things this post and then talk about the fun of training at 7,500ft (yes, even higher than Boulder).  And in Boulder they generally don’t kidnap you.

However, what they do here is cook really really well.  I’ve had amazing meals all week long, for virtually nothing.  As a co-worker put it – you can eat food as if Ruth Chris, but on Denny’s prices.

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And even those items that weren’t full blown meals were amazing.  For example, late Saturday afternoon I swung into a bakery which was similar to the one I visited in Texas.  Basically you load up your try and go to town.  We went to town.

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(The random guy behind us is looking at us like we’re crazy, meanwhile, the women at the counter attempts to count all the items we have.)

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The goal of our create-your-own-buffet event wasn’t to eat everything.  Nope, it was to sample.  At a whopping $12 for the entire tray (~30 cents per pastry) – it wouldn’t be a big deal if we only took a bite or two.  So later that night we setup shop in the hotel room and gave things a whirl.  Like wine-tasting, you tend to spit out quite a bit.  Some because it’s bad, and some because quite frankly I can’t eat that much dessert.

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(Above: Before, Below: After)

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I should point out it rained a ton here.  In fact, as I write this (on my flight south away from Mexico City) I remembered that this is the first time I’ve seen the sun in seven days…to be found at 35,000 feet.

In order to combat said rain – we picked up some little plastic poncho’s.  Which, oddly enough made us look like we were wearing giant condoms.  Thankfully I chose yellow, and not white.

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These would come in handy primarily in the city, where we took the little Turi-bus around, which is a hop-on-hop-off type bus.  We saw a ton…including quite a bit of the tree branches, as the bus was too tall for many of the tree’s lower limbs.IMG_9732[4]

Note the little warning below – they are serious about them branches!

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(Just in case it’s not clear above: I took a photo of a person taking a photo of the photo on the wall showing what’s right next to it…all from within the Anthropology Museum, which was dry inside.)

But, the highlight of the weekend was actually getting a chance to visit the Pyramids.  These giant ancient structures are the largest anywhere in the America’s, only second in size to the Great Pyramids in Egypt.  You remember when I visited those, right?  (If not, it should be a rite of passage around here…)

The national-park of sorts contains many smaller pyramids, along with the big one.  Here’s the view from some of the smaller ones, as well as some of the nearby area:

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And here I am up on top of the big one.

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Pretty amazing stuff.

So there ya go, my touristy weekend in a nutshell.  Tomorrow I’ll walk ya through getting a week of training in, both safely and at some serious altitude.  Have a good week!

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9 Comments

  1. holy shit. they must have thought you were crazy buying all those pastries.

  2. Nice! Looking forward to hearing how you managed the training 🙂

  3. Great photos! Those pastries look to die for!! YUM!!!

  4. Sounds like you had a lot of fun. We went to Mexico city in June and LOVED IT. Can’t wait to go back.

  5. Hi from South Portugal, after coming across one link to one of your posts, i continued to read your posts, almost all of them 8-), and decided to Thank You for the very usefull tips i found either in Tec stuff as in Nutrition, or Training, etc; altough i’m not a tri-athlete, i’m into mountain bike, but i’ve always looked with great respect and curiosity to the triathlon, and one of your posts almost convinced me to start the swimming wich has kept me from trying for years.

    Thank You for the effort and time spent doing all this, keep it up!

    P.S. Sorry for the probable mistakes in my English.

  6. The culture of Mexico is nothing short of mind-blowing and your post captures it extraordinarily well. From the mouth-watering food to the jaw dropping beauty of the beaches and ruins, I can honestly say that if I had the financial means necessary, I’d visit every single year for the rest of my life.

    Glad to hear you had such a fantastic trip…and managed to stay safe!

  7. definitely looking forward to hearing about your training experience down there! it’s like IFR flying in there b/c of the massive smog layer!

  8. Ok, I am totally jealous. I want to go back to Mexico. I think I need to. I need to work on my conversational skills….badly. :0)

  9. Pedro Manzana

    I just read your article about Mexico City. Please let me know when you come next time. I live and run here now since 5 years and for me it is the best running city in the world. We have almost every weekend super organized and very cheap competitions. You can run 20 km plus in 3,200 m flat and in a forest. La Pilar is maybe the only place in the world where you can run in almost 10,000 feet in a very nice forest. Other routes are El Ocatal 4 km round in 3,000 m forest, Naucali park 3 km round, with surveillance, Chapultapec park, etc. So will be impressed. So please let me know when you come again to Mexico and I will be delighted to show you our top running spots. I really find your tests very interesting and they help me a lot. I cannot wait to get the new Polar V800 watch. Abrazos, Pedro (actually I am from Germany).