Coast to Coast Adventure Race
Interview with Race Director Mike Lapcevic
Jacqueline Windh / 26.02.2006
I have lived in Costa Rica for sixteen years. The Raid Gauloises here, in 1990, was my first introduction to adventure racing. I helped train one of the teams on the rafting section, and I just thought what a great thing to do! A few years after that I started Coast to Coast Adventures, a tourism company, and our "signature trip" is a coast to coast journey that goes from the Pacific side to the Caribbean. We have been doing that trip for the last eleven years; we do, on average, one trip per month for four to eight people. It's a two-week trip, and all the way across they never touch a vehicle.
That's how the company started. We ran our first race in 1999, a mountain bike race along the coast, and then in 2001 ran our first Coast to Coast adventure race. That year we used the exact same route as our trip, and the winning team came in in under 35 hrs. From there, we just slowly started expanding, each year with a longer and different route, shooting for increasing it by a day every year. This year the race is 580 km, and they have six days. In 2010, our tenth anniversary of the race, we will do a three-country, ten-day Coast to Coast race, passing through Panama and Nicaragua, two countries that I also know well, as well as Costa Rica.
I have never wanted to make our races huge right away. I like small groups. We are learning, but we are working up to 2010 – we want that one to be a big year.
What do you look for in designing route?
First, I just take a general look at the map, looking for interesting places. I look for things like incredible rivers, volcanoes, plane crashes – last year the theme of the race was plane crashes. And then I just start connecting those things together.
I like for the teams to interact, so there are some sections that are intended to make a bottleneck, like crossing a river by rope. Hopefully some teams will stack up there, and get to know one another.
I always want there to be several routes that people can chose from. I put checkpoints in strategic locations, so teams will take diferent routes to get there. It makes it more difficult navigating – some will take shortcuts while others will choose the longer but safer way. I really believe that there is no one way to set a course; everyone does it in their own way. A lot of time I give GPS coordinates, but other times I won't; I just say get to this town and look for this landmark – so people are not just plotting coordinates, they also have to use their heads a bit, and look around.
I've never had a race that everyone has finished, and I would love for this to be the first one. That's the idea, to get everyone to the finish line. It is probably not likely, but it would be nice... Most race directors plan their logisitics around a 40% drop-out rate – but I think it would be great if more teams finish. Some people say, well, that is not an adventure race then, if everyone makes it... but I like the idea that most teams at least finish. To me, it is an expedition first – of course, it is also a race, but to me, that it is an expedition is more important.
Who do you see as the favoured team to win the race?
We've never had a foreign team win. Tikos are just so strong. These guys run fifteen races a year. Many of them work in the field. They don't really train specifically for races, they are just in top condition all the time. I think that three of the Tiko teams will jump ahead at the start, but that then the American teams will slowly start to catch up, as they have more technical experience. But I think the start will just be an explosion, as the local guys know the terrain and will start strong. Our local team AVENTURAS DE SARAPIQUI is made up of some of the strongest racers in the country. But we also have the USA team ROCK N'ROAD CYCLES back. They came in second last year, and they are determined to come in first this year.
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