Interviewed by Bolivian National TV (and I though Monday was a strange day..)

Todays experience probably beats the time when Frank was mistaken for Emilio Estevez by three screaming Bolivian teenage girls on out October stay….

We went to the track for our normal workout this evening. Which apparently is not a normal…

workouts for Bolivian standard. Our many hard runs at this altitude on the track with extremely short recoveries. Followed by high,high speed sprints. It looks hard and it feels even harder.. Apparently they had not seen anything like that before, because today Channel 3, the largest TV channel in Bolivia suddenly appeared on the stadium to watch and interview us. Really, really strange….. through a translater they made a full interview with me and took several running shots in front of about 70 young Bolivian athletes who wondered what was going on (even though I was probably the one looking the most confused..) I am kind of used to situations like this in Norway, but in Bolivia ? No,no,no :))) We are 19 hours of flying time away from home, knowing almost no Spanish and at high altitude in the Andes mountains. And by no means prepared for a TV interview. After the interview, the Chief of the track came running over to us and through the translater explained that from now on we could even work out outside of training hours. Just give a time and they will open the gates to the huge stadium for us. Anytime, except between 13 and 14.30 during the day, because that is when the Bolivian President works out….:) So suddenly we got all the respect and attention. Really, really, really strange down here….but it gave us a good laugh.

Then it took about one hour and Channel 8 showed up, the competing channel to Channel 3 (!) They also wanted interviews, now with both Frank and myself. It was such a weird situation and Henrik and I had to sneak away for a bit just to laugh of the whole thing. It is just like Staale Jan, my manager likes to say : Attention is not something that is just there, it is something that is made. Apparently the workouts had made the word go around, because with our now 20 words of Spanish it does not give us much of a chance to communicate.

If things continue like this we will be back in Norway in no time…

Marius