Abigail Rozenblit is a pianist and Juan Carlos Araujo runs cross-country races in the mountains. Her band is called Segundo Principio. His team is called Papacara. Here are their stories.

“I have two lives: by day, I work as an energy transition engineer and by night, I dedicate myself to music,” laughs Abigail. "During my working day, I distract myself from thinking about racing, because when I'm running, that’s the only thing I think about," explains Juan Carlos. Welcome to the world of two Tecpetrol employees who balance their schedules with their passions: Abigail Rozenblit, Technology Energy Transition Engineer in Argentina, and Juan Carlos Araujo, Quality Team Leader in Quito, Ecuador.

As autumn gets into its stride, we find Abigail finishing up some songs to record at the studio with her band. This chemical engineer, who is also studying for a doctorate, says, “With Leandro, who’s a bassist, we met in a previous group, a tango septet whose style was similar to Piazzolla. When that came to an end, we started this new project. We started to compose our songs in a different style and we tried acid jazz. For that, we needed good drums. We held some auditions, met Paula and the circle was closed.”

Juan Carlos is training for a race called Huairasinchi, one of the events on the Adventure Race World Series (ARWS) adventure racing circuit. “We run using a compass and a map in non-stop mode: it can last about 72 hours, and you catch three, four hours of sleep when you can, every now and then. These circuits are between four and six hundred kilometers long, involving running, cycling and kayaking. We always say that being in good physical condition is just the beginning. It takes a lot of discipline, calm, a great deal of planning and, above all else, a strong team.” Like Abigail with her band, Juan Carlos also found his running mates: his own family.

“My brother-in-law was running, so he invited me and my cousin to join him. Then my sister showed up. We call ourselves Papacara Salud S.A., papacara is a hard kind of snow that falls in the páramo, the tundra region in the Andes, and Salud S.A. is the company that sponsors us.” Segundo Principio also has a story behind its name. It’s the second principle of thermodynamics (it’s an engineering thing!), and also, for Leandro and Abigail, the band was a fresh start. That's what dreams are like, you have to add conviction to talent: “I started composing when I was playing with the previous band. I didn't think I could contribute anything from that side but I ended up doing this with support from Leandro, who’s a real trooper, and Paula, who ties up all the loose ends,” summarizes Abigail. Juan Carlos tells a similar story, "Our team is in good shape and they’ve got guts, but above all we have a bond between us, so we support our teammates, we wait for each other, and that makes us stronger when someone needs help."

What the future holds is always better, according to Abigail: “We’re releasing singles, which is how people do things now. Then we’ll have our album, our second one. Later on, we’re planning to present it live. When you listen to a song you wrote, and it sounds like you imagined, it’s sublime! And we have a very intimate dynamic. We get along really well, Leandro, Paula and I… it’s what we’ve always wanted!”

“I have a dream, which is to compete in the World Cup. The year when it was held in Ecuador, I couldn’t compete due to an injury, so my team ran with a replacement. As we are well-ranked internationally, we want to compete in the World Cup in South Africa, at the end of the year. We only need an extra sponsor to help us pay for it,” says Juan Carlos, visibly excited.