LA Ruta pt 3: Stage 2

Surprises
"Stage 2 is the shortest but it sucks," Juanca was telling us at the pre-race team meeting, hosted at his gorgeous casa. "I think it is the hardest one," he says, "basically you are either going up or you are going down." At the mandatory rider's brief the next day,  Roman, La Ruta's founder and director, explains that stage 2 will be 64 kilometers in length with some "surprises". BUT the exact route has yet to be finalized. There were actually 10 surprises. Stage 2 ended up being 74 kilometers in length, 10 kilometers more than briefed. And the last three kilometers can only be described as "Wha'?"

The Up, Up, Down.
The flag drops and soon thereafter I am pushing my bike up a wall. Juanca's words kept going through my head the entire day, "you are either going up or your going down." Of the 4 days of the event day 2 made me feel like a moron the most. It was the shortest day distance-wise but it was the second longest day of the event for me. My bike spent more time on top of me than I did on top of it. At times, the grade was so steep, I was convinced that if it shifted, just one more degree upward, I would actually be walking upside down. At one particularly steep section, the road (Why you would pave a road that steep in the first place is beyond me) was lined with spectators cheering on the riders actually riding their bikes. I tried to feed off of their enthusiasm in the hopes of actually riding my bike up the hill too. It took all of 10 seconds before I ran out of legs and had to start pushing again. This hill was the definite low point of the event for me. I let all of these great people, who spent the time and effort to hike or ride up to this point, down.  With my head hanging low, I just pushed up the hill, too ashamed to make eye contact with any of them. That hill was painfully steep.

Believe it or not, I am actually passing the guy riding his bike.

I'd Rather Be Pushing Right About Now!
"If I lean back just an inch further", I wondered, "would my lycra shorts catch on fire? Or would they be shorn from my body along with various bits of my anatomy?"  Those were the consequences I imagined awaited me, if or when, my ass made contact with the knobby rubber, rotating at nearly 40 miles per hour between my legs. That was just one of the many musings and dilemmas I had to deal with during the many descents that day.

As was mentioned earlier, you were either going up or down on day 2. Pushing the bike up the hills I would be whining to myself, "man this sucks." Plummeting down the hills, however, I would be thinking, "HOLY FUCK! I AM GOING TO DIE!!!" Oh and, "I'd rather pushing right about now."

Guess Who's Driving This Train?
The whole day was relentless for me. There were few sections where I could just relax and have fun. On one of the big descents, the road actually had a corkscrew turn. Yeah, exactly. Now take that f'd up mental picture and imagine riding a bicycle down it at 30 mph. My forearms are aching just thinking about it. On these descents you don't get to decide how fast you go, your brakes take care of that for you.   Squeeze those levers all you want. Sure you will slow down, for a bit. But then they will heat up and bye-bye brakey-poo. Luckily for me it happened to just my rear brake at the end of the first big descent. From that point forward I learned the art of brake management. Which means you free fall down the hill and brake at the last possible moment. If I were wearing a heart rate monitor I am sure it would show that my heart rate was far higher during the descents than the climbs.

Stinky German Guy.
At the last check point, Mario, our Tico photographer, informed me that there were about 20 kilometers to go with a "short, technical descent" just before the finish. But my GPS said that I had gone 50-some-odd kilometers already. He obviously meant 10 kilometers to go. Roman even told us at the day zero brief not to trust the locals ability to judge distance.

10 kilometers came and went. At this point, though, was the only real fun I had all day. A stinky German guy and I had been racing back and forth all day. I could "climb" (push my bike up hill) better than he could and I was stronger on the flats. But when it came to the technical, down hill stuff he would make like a Stuka. I had nothin' for Herr Stinkend. About the time when the stage was supposed to be over we were descending through a town on nice, smooth paved roads at about 25 mph or so. Herr Stinkend was ahead of me by about 400 meters and I was content with that. I wasn't "racing" per se. Suddenly, behind me the air explodes with the sound of car horn, cowbells, and obnoxious Spanish! The ball of racket pulls alongside me, "VAYA! VAYA! VAYA!" The folks in the SUV were beside themselves cheering me on. They were hanging out the windows ringing their cowbells inches from my ear, "VAYA! VAYA!!!" I thought, "there is no way I am going to disappoint these crazy ass Ticos this time." After shifting up a couple of gears I jumped out of the saddle. Either I was going to catch Herr Stinkend or I was going to brake some carbon fiber. The faster I turned the pedals the more obnoxious the mobile cheering section became. Suffering from a lack of oxygen to my brain, I can't be certain, but I believe my cheering section ran a couple of oncoming cars off the road. At nearly 40 mph the cheering section and I pass Herr Stinkend. As we fly by he looks over, grinning smugly. That's because he knew, that as soon as we got off the road and back on to a proper trail going down again, he'd be passing my candy-ass. Because I would be carrying my bike.


"Technical Descent"
I guess a bunch of mud covered boulders, on the side of a hill, is the definition of a "technical descent".

 A couple of minutes after I pass Herr Stinkend, I see a dude in the middle of the road waving flags around. "Maybe there is a wreck," I thought anticipating seeing some carnage that would affirm all of my fears. Nope. He was directing the racers off the road onto the "technical descent".  As soon as I hit the trail it was apparent that I would be doing a lot of carrying of the bicycle. "It just ain't worth it," I kept repeating to myself as I looked down the hill. The trail was nothing but a bunch of baby-head boulders covered in calf deep mud. But the more astounding detail was the fact that there were ruts in the mud from some sort of super machine. It's impossible for me to imagine what kind of car or truck could possibly have been able to drive on that trail. So I shouldered my bike and start stumbling down the "technical descent". After about 10 minutes I hear the distinct sounds of a mountain bike barreling down a muddy, bouldery hill behind me. I step off the trail. Sure enough it was Herr Stinkend. The only thing missing was the sound of Stuka sirens as he dived by me. Grinning. Smugly.
After about a mile of that joy the course turned on to pavement again. In order to continue I have to knock off all of the mud my bike accumulated, just so my tires will spin again. Shortly after I start riding again I see Herr Stinkend. "A HA!" I have caught the sour Kraut again! But then my joy turns to disappointment. Herr Stinkend has a flat. I ask if he needs any help and he just shakes his head nein.

Relief.
At the finish line I wasn't excited or happy. I was just relieved that it was over. However I was curious as to how I finished in front of R2. R2 was the strongest of the American riders in our group. After the start I had taken off a little faster than him. However I fully expected him to pass me on one of the climbs but he never did. When he did finally make the finish line we finally learned why. He had been involved in two wrecks. One of them involved a Tico who walked in front of him as he was going 30 mph down one of the crazy descents. He was battered, bruised and delirious. R2 had actually broke his helmet in 3 places. A lesser man would have died that day. But Randaconda wasn't going to have any of that dying crap get in the way of him finishing La Ruta.

La Ruta pt 2: Stage 1

Arrive Costa Rica
R2 and Endo were waiting for Sherri and I at the San Jose Airport. We load up his truck and head to R2's casa where we will stay for the first few days and a couple of nights during the race. R2 lives in Santa Ana which is located in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. We were surrounded by the mountain ridges that we would be riding up and over. R2 points out a bare spot on one of the mountains. "See that brown spot, way up there. That's where we will be riding on one of the stages." I try to comprehend what he is telling me but I just sit, staring out the window, slack jawed.

Costa Ricans are very nice people, at least on the Pacific side and in the Central Valley areas. So nice, in fact, that I often wondered if they were screwing with me. The other thing I noted was that Costa Ricans or "Ticos"(thats what the locals are referred to) are very active. You will find Ticos running, biking, swimming, hiking all of the time, all over the place. One theory I have as to why they are so active is based on the fact that sunrise is at 4:30AM. That means that by 5AM the sun is completely up and so are you. What else are you going to do that early in the morning besides lay in bed wishing your were asleep.

The Mayflower Research & Consulting LLC Team
That's right, we were sponsored. R2 knows the owner of Mayflower Research and somehow convinced him to cough up some dough to pay for our mechanic during the race with a little leftover for jerseys.
The riders:
Eddie (Yours truly.)
R2 (What? You don't know R2? Impossible, he knows everybody. Oh yeah, hard as nails too.)
Endo (One stoic kat. Whether he's "laughing" his ass off or planning to kill you, you'll never know.)
Juanca (Tico friend of R2. Again, so nice I thought for sure he was screwing with me.)
Jake (Friend of Juanca's who quickly became a friend of us all.)
La Kelly (The only chic in our group and probably the biggest stud of the bunch. I called her a chic just to piss her off, BTW.)
Our support crew consisted of our spouses, mechanic and someone else's spouse:
Sherri (My cheerleader and anger management coach.)
Cindi (R2's wife. She should have been racing with us. She would kick La Ruta right in the ding-ding.)
Laura (Juanca's wife and team director. She is a master at herding kittens. Former La Ruta racer.)
Becca (When Sherri wasn't at a check point Becca was there pointing me in the right direction.)
Sara (Someone else's spouse. I am sure she was wishing her man was with us. I am also sure her man was glad he wasn't. )
Emilio (Our mechanic and all around great guy.)

Race Strategy
Having never done a mountain bike race or event of any kind I decided I should play it cautious. Which, when you think about it, is moronic. If I really wanted to be "cautious" I wouldn't be riding a mountain bike, in the "toughest race on the planet".  Slow and steady would be my mantra for the race. As long as I kept moving, forward, I could make the finish line by the cut-off time each day. The heat and I don't get along so well so it was imperative that I drink water and replenish my electrolytes. A solid nutrition plan would be essential too. 10-12 hours is what I estimated my finish time to be for day 1. So I planned to stop every hour and eat and drink no matter what. Once you go into a deep caloric deficit it is really hard to come back. I read a quote from a pro racer last year, "the race is so long that it ends up being an eating contest." To be honest when I would get apprehensive about the race I would just tell myself that it is just an "eating contest". And boy would I get fired up again. 'Cause Eddie likes to eat!

A Matter of Efficiency
300+ cyclists started day 1. It is hard not to get fired up when the flag drops. You feel good and everyone is hauling ass. But then you make that first left hand turn out of Jaco and staring you in face is the first mountain of the day. Your no longer feeling so good and the reality of what your about to do sinks in. Makes ya almost want to vomit. Oh how the world turns. I look down at my watch, its been 3 whole minutes since I left the starting line. I shake my head and wonder,"what was the point of that?" There is a guy riding beside me with one arm. I do a double take and no shit, that guy only has one arm and he's passing me. The cajones on that guy.

We cross a bridge, well actually its just a pile of rocks in the stream, and so begins the first climb of the day. The hill kicks up pretty steep but I am riding it. Cool. After a couple minutes the pitch kicks up again and my cadence drops, 40rpm, 20rpm, 5rpm, track stand, and I am off. I look back down the hill and I can still see the bridge/pile of rocks where the climb started. Oh boy. "Well I'll just push the bike for a bit until the hill levels off a bit", I think to myself. So I push, and push and push and the hill just gets steeper. But I notice that even though I am pushing my bike I am passing folks who are killing themselves to keep riding up the hill. I am sure in the mountain biking world its considered faux pas to push your bike. Being an outsider though I could give a shit. If I can move faster pushing than riding AND use less energy doing so. Well I can tell you what Eddie boy is going to do. That first climb established a trend that I would follow for the rest of the race. I would ride until I ran out of gear but before I ran out of legs. Then I would continue by either carrying or pushing the bike. This technique worked out pretty well for me throughout the rest of the event. In my defense I was running 39t-26t chain rings up front and a 12-36 cassette. The smart people were running granny gears down to 22t up front. Another shining example of my lack of experience in mountain biking.

Broken Spider Sense
On the descent from the first climb I managed to be all by myself. So I am bombing down this mountain when the road splits. I don't know what I was thinking, more than likely I wasn't, but I just take the path of least resistance. Which, go figure, was the wrong answer. So there I am flying down this road when my "spider sense" starts tingling. I notice that on this muddy, dusty road I am on there are no other bike tracks. Immediately I about face and retrace my route until I see a course marker. Sure enough there it was plain as day pointing out the correct way to go. Why didn't my "spider sense" start tingling before I made the wrong turn? Stupid "spider sense".

Go Where? Over There!
Between the two big climbs of the day is a park. The only way to describe this park is two words, Land of the Lost. Not exactly 2 words but only 2 of 'em count. For about 3 hours I carried my bike through rivers and up erosion ditches. The trail would tease you by making you think it was rideable. You would no sooner start pedaling then splash! Your in another river. Finally make it out of the park to start the second big climb of the day. Up to this point I have been on the trail over 5 hours. I have just run out of water. But our first supported check point of the day is coming up. The girls and the mechanic will be there waiting for us. As I near the checkpoint you can hear folks cheering and shouting. There are people running around helping their riders. But I don't see Sherri or the other girls. I am searching furiously for Sherri. Finally there she is, wearing her camo hat with the Ranger Scroll on it! That's my little Ranger-ette! She sees me and, in Sherri style, starts smiling and clapping furiously. I stop and give her a big sweaty smooch. She tells me that the actual refit site is a little further down the road, "go over there". So I hop on the bike and roll on down the road, "go where?" "OVER THERE!" "Where?" Over there!!" "Go where?!" I end up rolling past our mechanics station but Laura intercepts me and points me in the right direction. Sherri, bless her gigantic heart, was just so excited and me so oxygen deprived that we had a little commo problem. But it all worked out just fine.

My Biggest Fan
The run in to the finish line in Santa Ana was a little precarious. The route took us right through the middle of town during rush hour. Weaving through traffic after nearly 10 hours on the trail was interesting to say the least. After squeezing between a bus and the wall of a tunnel I could see the race officials directing bike traffic to the actual finish line. As I approached the finish line I could see Sherri. When she realized it was me coming across she came running. She had the biggest most genuine smile on her face that I had ever seen. She didn't even wait for me to stop before she started hugging me and giving me smooches all over. I kind of felt sorry for her because I was wearing 10 hours and 70-something miles worth of funk. She kept telling me how proud she was and how much she loved me. That moment was exactly what I had envisioned the day I decided to take on this endeavor, La Ruta De Los Conquistadores.

Smooch attack at the finish of Stage one.

Sherri and I just prior to the flag drop.

 

Pre "La Ruta": Hello bike. Take me to La Ruta.

In the final 3 weeks leading up to La Ruta I had to learn how to fix a mountain bike, learn how to ride a mountain bike, and figure out how to train for riding up mountains in Ohio, in which there are no mountains. After the race, I think I did ok for myself.


Baby's Mama-Drama
"Tell him he should learn how to work on his own bike." Hmmm.... That's what the guy told my wife when she picked up the Niner Air 9 Carbon we bought from him.  I found the bike on Craigslist. Looked like an excellent find. Carbon hardtail 29er, Fox 80mm racing fork, SRAM XX components all around, Stan's Tubeless set up. A straight-up X-country race machine. And that is precisely what he did the short year he had it. He raced the bejeebus out of that thing. Hence his little piece of advice on learning how to wrench. Before the bike made it to La Ruta I ended up replacing half of the components on the bike. That's what you get when you buy something from the internets from half a world away. Two good things did come out of the baby's mama-drama that was my bike. 1) I definitely learned how to work on my own bike. 2) The frame ended up having an warranty issue whereby the folks at Niner graciously sent me a new one. I win.

Uh-oh. Bad mistake.
So I finally get the bike in a rideable condition. Now its time to hit the trails! But crap I forgot, I don't ride mountain bikes. So where to go, GOOGLE! Alum Creek Phase 1 looked like a good starting point. No climbing, only 7 miles, and only15 minutes from the house, perfect! There was some mention of roots but how bad could those be? My plan, go do 3 leisurely laps to get around 90 minutes on the bike. That really was my thinking going into my very first ride on a mountain bike. Obviously I hadn't ridden a mountain bike before.

I get to the trail head unload and head off to get "acquainted" with my bike. One lap and 1 hour and 20 minutes later I finally make it back to the start point. I am exhausted. I am bleeding. I am muddy. My feelings are hurt. "What have I gotten myself into?" That's the only thought running through my head. As I limp back to my truck and load up I notice other riders, who have gotten off the trail after me. They were all clean. No mud or blood and they were smiley happy people. WTF!!!

On the drive home I contemplate selling the bike and telling R2 that I would be overly joyed to hand him water bottles during the race. Once I got home, cleaned my wounds and regained some of my dignity I decided to keep the bike.


Mohican State Park and the case of the hammered taint.
After such a demoralizing experience at Alum Creek Phase 1 I decided to search for another trail. I was in no hurry to return and have my lunch money taken from me again. Google told me that the Mohican State park has some great trails. 25 miles worth of single track to be exact and it was only an hour from mi casa. Off to Mohican I went. After my last performance I knew 25 miles was going to take me around 3-4 hours. So I came prepared for a long slog.  Mohican has some climbing. Nothing too crazy or sustained but you can get a little over 3000ft in those 25 miles. What I wasn't prepared for was the downhill stuff. You'll be screaming down this little bitty trail weaving your bike through trees and then the trail decides to turn back on itself with no warning. The first few switchbacks I would slow to a crawl or stop completely and just walk it around the turn. After a while I started getting some confidence, then WHAMO! I eat shit and bounce my head off a root. I get up and feel a little dizzy. So the next couple miles I am taking it easy and monitoring myself. Once I realized I was more scared than hurt I picked up the pace again.

As I tick off each mile I can feel my handling skills getting better and my confidence building. "OK, this mountain biking thing is actually getting to be pretty fun", I start thinking. At about mile 19 I come across my first rock garden. And for the next 3 miles my saddle becomes a UFC fighter and commences to open up a can of "whoop-ass" on my taint (pun intended)! I try riding standing up to defend myself. But that just gives the saddle more time to build velocity before it connects. As I continue riding the rock garden the bike continues to buck. I try to tap out but the saddle just keeps coming. "WHO COMES UP WITH THIS SHIT!!" I am almost in tears. I actually start laughing hysterically at one point. If I go fast my taint becomes a speed bag. If I go slow the saddle actually tries to become one with my spine. And the only time the pummeling stops in that 3 miles is when I wreck. Oh the humanity. And then its over. For the last mile or so back to the truck I don't touch my saddle once. On the way home I start cracking myself up thinking of ways I can convince my wife to ice my, sure to be swollen, saddle area and I forget about how miserable I was.

Mohican, from that point forward, became my training grounds for La Ruta. I eventually found out how to bypass the rock gardens. And all was well with the world and my taint.

Myself and R2 morning of Day 1

Team Triathlon "Down Under"...well kinda sorta...

Sunday, September 25th the Aussies hosted a Triathlon at their Consulate General compound. The Tri consisted of a 600m swim in a pool, 16 kilometer bike, 8 kilometer run. There were individual and team competitions. Chief and I, half-heartedly, committed to race as a team a week ago. What really made up our minds was the fact that we had a scheduled training session the same day as the race. I really wasn't looking forward to running around, in the hot sun, pretending to shoot bad guys with my 9mm booger picker a-la 6th grade recess. Besides the chance to get out and ride a real bicycle, with the wind in my face was something I have only been able to dream about for the last 2 months.

9mm Booger Picker

Chief and I were unsuccessful in finding a third team member. Most people couldn't swim or didn't fancy running 5 miles in the hot sun. Actually most people didn't fancy running at all. The couple people that were interested guess-timated that they could run 8-9 minute miles. At which case we weren't really interested in them. Even though we weren't training for this event specifically we weren't going into it just to participate. We wanted to be contenders. Chief finally decided he would do the swim and the run. I would do the bike. Good on him.

Now that we had a team we needed a bike. A minor detail, I know. There was hear-say that bikes would be available to borrow. But what kind of bike that would be was a mystery. We sent out e-mail blasts and asked everyone we came across if they had or knew of a bike we could borrow. Come race morning, no joy. Looked like we were at the mercy of the rumor mill. At the race registration we ran into some Americans, from the Embassy, who were doing the race also. Apparently they had an extra mountain bike. However the rear derailleur didn't work. At that point we didn't care. If it had anything resembling two wheels we would take it. So 15 minutes before the start of the race we finally had our 35,000 pound, Schwinn, full suspension, 3 speed (bike had three rings on the crank), mountain bike. After a 10 minute test ride/warm up, I pronounced it, heavy.  Now we were ready to race!!

Chief rocked the swim. He was probably one of the faster swimmers in the whole competition. So much so that folks were  video taping him as he ticked off the laps. Chief gets done, I hand him some aqua and I run to my rusty steed. As I line up to start the bike leg the timer groups three of us together, to make timing easier. One of the guys is riding a nice Orbea carbon road bike. "Oh this guys is going to be a rocket ship", I thought. The timer sends us off and I am right behind Orbea dude. We start climbing a hill  and I end up passing the guy. Then he passes me on the down hill. But wait a minute, big ass speed bumps coming up. I pass him and proceed to get massive air over the speed bumps. As I am airborne one of the local security guards starts clapping enthusiastically and then proceeds to salute me as I fly by. He never stopped clapping the entire race. Except when he was saluting. Orbea dude and I play this back and forth game for most of the first lap until my chain pops off at the start of the second lap. It took me a minute or so to fix my chain. But after that I never saw Orbea dude again. I managed to keep my lap time even on both laps. My time was 31:20 for the 16k with an average speed of 19 mph. And that is with the mechanical time included. I am happy with that considering the bike weighed a million pounds and I only had hard, medium, and ridiculously easy gears.

Chief finished up the race with a respectable 35 minute 8k run. In the end our time was good enough for second place in the team competition. We lost by only 2 minutes. Chief did the swim in 10:36, their time was 12 something. I completed the bike in 31:20 their time on the bike was 31 flat. However their rider was an Italian, wearing Italian kit, riding an exotic Italian carbon road bike. Yet he only gained 20 seconds on us during the bike. Hmmm.... Where they got us was the run, obviously. Our time was 35 minutes and some change. Their run time was 31 something.

Our sly little plan to get out of training failed miserably. Apparently there is this little thing that you can do. Its called rescheduling. And that is what they did. So come Monday morning there we were, booger pickers flailing around wildly, "Bang, bang!!"

La Ruta De Los Conquistadores

Umm... So I signed up for this mountain bike race in Costa Rica. Did I mention that I haven't been on a mountain bike since 1993? And in this race there are 4 stages, approximately 240 miles, a volcano, and somewhere North of 35,000 feet of climbing. Did I mention that for 9 of the  12 weeks prior to the race I will only be able to train on a M3 Keiser stationary bike?

OK, enough excuse building. Its going to be tough. Major understatement, I know.

My girl is my biggest fan, believer, and the future source of my demise. But I love the hell out of her. Initially her and I were just going to vacation in Costa Rica and support a couple friends who are doing the race. But one day, while chatting, Sherri comes from the top rope, "I want you to do the race...." "HAHAHA! You so funny", I said. But then I realized she was serious. So before she saw me for the wuss that I am, I agreed. She promptly started giggling with joy and clapping. All the while I am forcing a smile, when in reality I wanted to vomit. Now here I am training for the "toughest race on the planet". Those aren't my words, that is what the race bills its self as. And from looking at the elevation profile I ain't one to argue.

When it is all over, the endless hours on the stationary bike, the bananas, energy drinks, volcanoes, mountains, mud, hike-a-bikes, brake burning descents, railroad bridges, and of course the climbing, will all be worth it. Because I know Sherri will be there smiling, giggling, and clapping like an idiot as I limp across the finish line every miserable day.

My bike I found Craigslisting a couple of weeks ago.

La Ruta