What is La Ruta? Cribbed
from Velonews:
What is
La Ruta? A soul-sappingly hard, exotically wild, singular journey across
laughably steep inclines, hysterically steeper descents, through jungles,
plantations, villages, across ecosystems and temperate zones, over volcanoes
and beaches and terrain that you never quite imagined you could ride on a bike.
As the
locals screamed, it’s pura vida. What’s that mean? Just look around. Everything
is great, and green, and growing, even if you don´t have much in your pockets,
or on your bike. Regardless, you’re very alive. When you wake up in the
morning, for three straight days, you get to ride your bike through rain
forests and over volcanoes. That’s pura vida.
From the
start on the beach in Jacó, you’ll soon learn just how alive you are, even if
moments later you feel like you might die. Ever climbed a 30-percent gradient
for 30 minutes? How about an hour? Try riding four miles per hour, up a
slip-and-slide. Ever slithered your way down a trough of mud, your bike angled
onto one side, your feet onto the other, cantilevered above a four-foot-deep
crevasse of muck? Get your self to La Ruta if that sounds like being alive.
The
first two hours of La Ruta will kindly introduce you to a new way of racing
your bike. Your forehead alone will generate a showerhead’s worth of sweat;
your brain could very well throb with the venom of unfamiliar heat; your legs
may revolt and convulse as you thrash your way up a ladder of slick steps in
the sludge. But scan the jungle you’re coursing through and gasp at the
mysterious foliage that envelopes you. It may get dark.
That's
about right. This is a 3-day, 310 km mountain bike stage race from
Pacific coast to Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
Why did
I do it? I've done all the "normal" stuff. I've done (and
continue to do) almost every discipline of cycling. Mountain bike races,
Criteriums, Cyclocross, Circuit, Road races, stage races, Battenkill-type
races, time trials, triathlons, and probably a few others I'm forgetting.
I want
to do more than normal, and I want to do something epic, every year.
La Ruta
satisfied the criteria. It was EPIC x2. It was also fun, in a painful way.
One of
my attributes is that I am ok with suffering.
I don’t love to suffer, but I’m very much ok with endurance related
suffering and pain that comes with it. I
may not have the strongest legs in every event, and I may not be the best
technical rider, runner, or swimmer, but I can suffer with the best of them.
The 1st
day of La Ruta was just painful. There was very little fun. The second day
was the most fun because they let this be an actual MTB race with technical
descents, both rocks and road. The 3rd day was fun because my legs were
for some reason had a boundless supply of energy.
To boil
it down, probably 2/3 of this is a climbing competition. About 1/3 is
descending, and 1/3 is time trial. The math might not work, but
in reality, it does.
To cut
to the chase,
-
My time was 17 hours, 38 minutes
-
I finished 12th out of 180 people in the non-Federales
category, which is a non-UCI cat.
-
In 40+ UCI, my time is 8th out of 50.
-
They also had 40 pro riders, including Todd Wells, Alex Grant,
Paolo Montoya, and Marconi Duran. My
time was 23rd if I were competing in the Pro race.
-
I’m happy with these results, considering I had a terrible start in
1st Stage
LINKS:
Pre-stage pics
Hey, great job and great write-up! I'm in NJ and ride with a bunch of the MTBNJ guys. I'm planning to ride La Ruta next year and they told me to reach out to you. I'd love to pick your brain about it if you don't mind. Shoot me an email at erics_email77@yahoo.com whenever you get a chance. -Eric
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