Panama

Well La ruta 2007 has concluded for this yr so I hit the road and biked down to puerto viejo costa rica to relax for a few days. Found a hostal, rocking J´s, which had 50 tents set up in a barn type structure and another 80 hammocks in another barn along the ocean. Pretty wicked. Spent 5 days there, surfing and eating then hopped on the bike and pedalled down to borcas del torroa island, panama. The biggest difference I notice between canada and panama is that they have banana crossings down here instead of moose crossings. Yah for real, no lie, it scared me at first to see bananas crossing the highway but I guesse its common. My first impression of panama is that its people are mischievous alot like mexicans but at the same time pretty good people. There are also alot of americans down here investing in cheap land. The biking is pretty good, few cars on the highways, although the monkeys have started throughing things at me out of the trees and some crazy sounds come out of the jungle, something like a sasquatch slash rutting elk cross. Food is cheap, i eat bananas. They are all over the road. I ate 14 of them during a 4 hr ride. I am now swinging across pànama on vines. Well I got bananas to eat so until next time.....

La Ruta La Finito

The fourth and final day of la ruta had a net elevation loss of 1500 m and a 70 km flat section to end the stage. pretty easy right. haha hahha ahh, nope. pretty hard. to start the day we road up a 6 km climb in which i was sitting around 20th near the top. after the first decent i made it into a paceline with 3 other riders (andreas hestler, jason sager, a tico). riding with other riders was key for the day as most the day was on flat gravel roads in which drafting helps alot. after an hour or two of riding in the paceline we hit a railroad track which we had to bike on for 12 km, hiking across trestles with rivers and crocodiles 50 ft below us. pretty sketchy. coming onto the first trestle, the rider ahead of me had a tie break loose from below him, luckily his ass hit the tie behind him, while is feet dangled in the air. we all got scared and quit the race. haha. nope. we actually kept going but i didnt go as fast and got left behind. for the next 25 km i chased hard as the 3 riders ahead of me kept catching up to other riders and soon they had a paceline of 6 riders. the highlight of the day was watching the wheel vehicle that was following the 6 riders ahead of me gettting swept downstream at one of the many river crossings of the day. i got to watch as the water came up to his doors and slowly drifted the crazy tico downstream. lucky for him he got wedged up on a sandbar and was able to back up and reroute to a bridge like the rest of the vehicles. seeing this entertainment put a smile on my face and a bit of extra juice in my legs and soon after this i was able to latch onto the paceline which had 7th-12th place in it and cruise with them for a good hr before coming to the second railroad section of the day. this time on one of the trestle bridges we came across the lead motorbike which had driven straight into a 3 ft gap were one of the ties was missing. 4 ticos were trying to pull his wedged bike out of the hole while the rider looked pretty stunned sitting beside the tracks. unfortunately none of us saw the crash but rumuor has it that it could challange for TSN highlight of the night. right after this i lost contact with the paceline as my bodywent offline an had to put pretty much all my power in making the bike go straight as i was getting dazed, my muscles were scraping whatever fuel was left for them and my mind was on the caribean beach beside us. After riding another 15 km on the tracks we got rerouted into the bush were were biked through countless washouts in the road, some which were 3 ft deep and our bikes were up the the top of the tires in water. with 15 km to go my body came back online and i was able to catch one tico before the finish as I rode in for an 11th place for the day which gave me a 13th overall gc for the 4 days. the finishline was on playa bonita beach, 50 ft from the ocean where i did the only thing i could think of and hopped off my bike and dove straight into the first wave a saw. the greatest finish to a race ever. period.

For the next 5 hours a bunch of us sat around, mowing down the food and watching other riders crawl across the line. I must say that as hard as this race is, it must be 5 times harder for the slower riders that take 10 hrs to finish the stages as they donèt get a chance to relax or eat food all afternoon like some of us. instead they finish at dark, get clean, get one meal in them and then bed before waking up at 4am for the next stage. From what i saw this isènt only the toughest mtn bike race in the world but it is also probably the one with the greatest diversity as we road across every kind of terrain which costa rica could possibly offer us. For anyone interested in an adventure they should check this race out!

La Ruta Days 2 & 3

Day two began with a small 3 km climb to warm the riders legs up for the 3600 m of climbing, 75 km stage 2. Throughout the day riders rode up on ridges above the sweet costa rican landscape and through small villages were the school kids went crazy. To end the day the organizers put us down a 4 km mud shoot singletrack which was nearly the end of a couple riders. Half way down the decent I slid out on a side hill and fell face first about 1 ft from a 25 ft drop into a gully which was hidden by the dense jungle. Later on in the day another rider wasn´t so lucky and tumbled head first into the drainage. Somehow unhurt, the american rider spent the next 20 minutes or so trying to find a way back onto the trail. After stage 1 this a breeze although my day started with a flat 3 km in which a nail pierced my rear tire. Spending the next 10 minutes fixing the hole, i soon found myself at the complete back of the 550 rider pack. After passing a couple hundred riders, i flatted again, this time having better luck fixing it and then spending the next 4 hours riding my way through the field to finish in 28th.

Stage 3 was a 35 km climb up a volcano before a 30 km decent down the back side. Coming to the top of the climb in 19th i hit the dh which was full of softball size rocks and 1 ft deep mud which proved to scare the living sh*t out of most riders. Canadians have been well known to dominate this dh in the pastt and i figured i better let my breaks go for a while and pretty soon i had blown by 8 riders in less then the first 5 km. Feeling pretty good about myself i soon came around a bend to find 3 cows in the middle of the trail. Pretty sure that the cow would win in a head on collision i head for a mud slide beside the path and somehwat controlably bailed. Now pretty scared sh*tless myself i decided i better slow it down a notch before i became implanted in the next cow. For the next 1 hr i decened solo down to the finish for an 11th place. The highlight of the day came with the chance to pose with the two Clarita water girls and the finish line for a sponsor shoot. Tommorow is the final day of this yrs La Ruta, a 120km coast down to the caribean ocean.

La Ruta de Suffer

Arriving in san jose costa rica monday afternoon i managed to catch a ride 2 hrs to the small town of Jaco, the start of the 4 day, 360 km, 13 000 m of climbing, La Ruta de Conquistator mtb race. On tuesday I met up with some other riders from alberta and pre rode the first 10 kn of the course..... wow did i ever feel magnificent in the 30 degree, 100 percent humidity. a bit of a change from work last week hiking around in a foot and a half of snow chasing around pine beetles in northern bc. Nonethless the start of the real suffering was less then 24 hrs away so we did the best we could to get some sleep before the 3am arrising and 5 am start today.

4:50 am, the organizers put on a huge firework show before firing the gun and sending the 600 racers from 30 countries into the dawn of another costa rican day. The first 5 km was great, flat, fast gravel and then the suffering began with the first 1000 m climb of the day. This was just a warmup for the 3 900 m of climbing of the day, some on hike a bike donkey paths and not to mention the dozen or so large creek crossings. After crashing hard early on in the race I managed to get in a a decent rythym and passed a few riders before riding solo for the last 3:30 hrs of the day without ever seeing another rider. Between the 4 feed zones I drank 11 bottles of water on the day and probably consumed around 7000 calories. This I found out was not enough as with 10 km to go the legs went to autopilot and my head went to foodland. the legs went there speed and only there speed, which probably wasnt all that fast as a young boy on his grandmas bike pulled up beside me and started smiling. He then got a goofy smirk on his face and took off on his bike ahead of me leaving me in the dust. The fact the boy was 12 yrs old and on a 3 speed bike with a basket made me feel good. On the last decent of the day i started cruising to make up lost time for my legs, all was going well till I lost my back brake and started gaining speed much faster then I would ever want too. With a large switch back coming up i had no choice but to make my own run away lane into the jungle. probably the scariest moment of my life as I tore into the thick vegetation expecting to run into a log and supermaning across into the costa rican jungle, instead though i hit a marsh and gradually came to a hault.... crawling out of the bush and back on the decent i tired to keep speed down with the front breaks and then used what was left of my legs to climb the final 2 km to the finish line where i found out I ended up 17th overall. Today was the hardest day I have ever had on a bike but I guesse that is what marathon biking is all about. Well off to get some eats and small sleep before cracking into stage 2 tommorow.....

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