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.