Costa Rica: The Coastal Challenge 2009
The 242 km race starts on Sunday...
Jacqueline Windh / 26.01.2009
I flew in on Thursday, a full ten days before race start! I spent the night in San Jose, and had dinner with Mike Lapcevic (race director of the Coast to Coast Adventure Race, which takes place in April), then headed out here to the coast the next way. I’ve wound up in Dominical, a tiny surfy village on the Pacific coast. I wanted to be somewhere in this part of the country, south of San Jose, so I would be roughly on the race route - i.e. acclimatizing to the right blend of heat and humidity.
Dominical is great! I had no idea what to expect, and this place is just my style. I’ve got a cheap private hotel room (with free wireless) a stone’s throw from the beach. I knew I needed to run a few hills this week - well, Mike knows this country like the back of his hand, so I picked his brain for routes. He directed me to some hilly gravel roads just south of here, so I’ve been getting both my beach runs and my hill runs in.
I’ll head back to San Jose on Saturday, to meet with the organizers and my fellow runners. I am both looking forward to, and fearing, this race. As some of you know, I attempted it last year. I was down-graded (along with nearly half the field) to Adventure category on Day 2, for not meeting the time cut-off - but then I had to drop out on Day 4 because of a knee injury. It was so heart-breaking for me to stop at that point, when every other part of my body was doing well and wanted to keep going.
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